Stan in Oly, WA
Well-known Member
My wife got a food dehydrator at a garage sale, brought it home, and plugged it in to test it. It worked for a while---the fan ran and the element heated---then it stopped working. She thinks that some solid baffles on the bottom rack which she didn't know enough to remove may have caused too much heat buildup. Anyway, now the element won't heat.
I took it apart and it appears that the problem may be at an electrical component between the potentiometer and one end of the element. It may be a fuse. It is about 1/2" long and 3/32" in diameter between about an inch of stiff wire at each end. It resisters as an open circuit on my ohmmeter at every potentiometer/temperature setting. Is it likely to be something other than a fuse, so that I would do more damage if I were to jump around it to test the element?
My wife found the parts list and drawing online, but the drawings and the numbers are too poor to read. The list does include a fuse, and no other electrical component such as a resistor that I can see. The dehydrator was sold by Sears. I have had bad luck getting parts for old Sears appliances, but something standard like a fuse should be available elsewhere.
Stan
I took it apart and it appears that the problem may be at an electrical component between the potentiometer and one end of the element. It may be a fuse. It is about 1/2" long and 3/32" in diameter between about an inch of stiff wire at each end. It resisters as an open circuit on my ohmmeter at every potentiometer/temperature setting. Is it likely to be something other than a fuse, so that I would do more damage if I were to jump around it to test the element?
My wife found the parts list and drawing online, but the drawings and the numbers are too poor to read. The list does include a fuse, and no other electrical component such as a resistor that I can see. The dehydrator was sold by Sears. I have had bad luck getting parts for old Sears appliances, but something standard like a fuse should be available elsewhere.
Stan