“We Fixed the Dryer”

The drive belt on our clothes dryer broke yesterday -- I was standing there when it happened, and it startled me! -- so today my Grandfather and I put in a new one. (He and Gramma are up visiting for the week from Florida. They'll be here for the full summer sometime in June.)

I thought it would be a two man job, especially for this man who hasn't done it in at least fifteen years. As it turned out, I had the dryer apart and the old belt out by the time Grampa showed up. He took the old belt down the street to pick up a new one, and we had it all back together again (working, with no extra parts) in another 40 minutes.

The only difficulty was figuring out how the tension arm and pulley fit with the belt and the "pulley" (or whatever it's called) on the motor. We did finally figure out that the arm needed to apply a lot of pressure to hold the belt snugly against the drum, but Grampa cut his arm a little in the process. ("Bah, that's nothing," he said. "I'm old, I bleed easy.")