Kenmore Heavy Duty Capacity Clothes Dryer 90 Series dismantle for cleaning or repair - Fire Hazard

How to remove the outer front cover on your Kenmore 90 series heavy duty capacity clothes dryer.
Gaining entry into the interior of  a Kenmore 90 series clothes dryer.


I would advise, that at least once a year, to take the front cover off and vacuum household dust from inside the dryer housing that will accumulate over time.  It doesn't matter if you consistently empty the dryer filter between every load, simple household dust will accumulate in large portions inside your clothes dryer housing underneath your drum.  It needs to be cleaned out annually to prevent possible fires and / or potential parts failure from overheating.


The first thing that needs to be done is to DISCONNECT ELECTRICAL POWER by either unplugging the dryer or turning off the appropriate breaker in your panel box.  There will be energized parts inside of your dryer even if your dryer is not engaged to run- so please don't forget to disconnect electrical power.

Using a stiff putty knife, insert it approximately 3.5"- 4" from the ends of the bottom cover depressing the locking snaps downwards.  You want to shine a light in the crack and ensure the putty knife blade is above the black snapping apparatus, depress it down and open that end of the cover.  Do the same thing for the other end.

Just make sure your putty knife has a stiff blade or else it will not provide the rigidity needed to dislodge and depress these locking means downwards. Once again, the knife blade needs to slide in, above these locking mechanisms.  You can easily see this with a flashlight.

There are only two locking mechanisms on the bottom cover.  One on each end about 3.5"- 4" from the end of the panel.

Close up view of the locking clips...please excuse the dust.  Just lift the cover right off of the bottom holders.

 

It doesn't matter how much you vacuum and sweep your floors, there will undoubtedly be dust accumulated inside of your dryer housing if you haven't executed this cleaning often.  At one point a few years ago, my dryer was cutting off in the middle of a drying cycle.  The culprit- a large portion of accumulated dust inside.  The safety sensors were sensing fire hazard conditions due to accumulated dust upon the sensors and in the interior of the heating element housing, thus stopping the drying cycle.

What I found:

I had already vacuumed all of the deep dust out of the bottom of the dryer before I thought about snapping photos. It was bad, real bad!  I did however, think about taking a few pictures of the element before I cleaned it thoroughly.  Most of the dust was gone but you can still see some remaining inside.  Plus, take note of where a couple of small dust fires had occurred, one inside the element housing and the other on top of.  NOW, that is super scary.  I should have had my butt whipped for not thinking of this before I had an issue.  

One of the reasons I am sharing is because it's one of those -out of sight, out of mind- scenarios.   

So clean out your dryer at least once a year to prevent a potential house fire.

Next thing to do is to remove the dryer filter so that you can remove the motor cowl without damaging the filter.

Next using a 1/4" nut runner remove the top two screws on the cowl, one on each end.

 

BE CAREFUL...removing this cover because there is a fragile foam seal that seals the cover in place. Just take your time when removing the cover and you should not damage it.

vacuum and clean this cover thoroughly

Here you can see the foam seal that I mentioned earlier.  Vacuum the interior area around this centrifugal fan.

Next remove the heating element cover.  Just be extra careful and vacuum this out with a slim line attachment on your hose.  It is critical that there is not any dust left remaining on top of or either inside of the element housing, to prevent any potential fires. Use care to not dislodge any of the wires and their holding apparatus.

All vacuumed out and ready for reassembly.

90 Series Kenmore heavy duty capacity clothes dryer.

If you need to gain more access to more of the interior,  visit my post here on gaining access to more of the interior..when you arrive there just scroll down a little bit and you will discover a picture tutorial on how to gain access into the inner most portions of the interior of your dryer.  To be able to remove drum (tub), dryer tub belt, motor access, etc;

If you found this post of dryer disassembly useful please