Electric clothes dryer keeps burning up heating coils

[oldfella1962]

It sounds like you have a loose or corroded connection.
You very well may test the correct voltage when the dryer is not running and it breaks down under a load.
A heating element is an inductive load and needs both legs of the 220 to operate correctly.
One leg runs all the controls/motor then goes to one end of the element the other leg may go thru a centrifugal switch but then goes directly to the element.
If you are getting 120 volts to each end of the element it should heat properly.

Thanks, I'll check that out! A loose wire is very possible considering dryers are always jiggling & vibrating by their very nature of that drum rotating.
I already ordered the parts, so while I'm waiting for them to arrive, I'll give the wring a good inspection.

 

[Milkman]

Have you measured voltage?

What was the voltage?

 

[oldfella1962]

What was the voltage?

Busy doing family stuff now. I'll measure it tomorrow though.

 

[Kdog]

It could be a million things, but I had the exact same issue years ago, and it was a bad breaker in the panel.

 

[huntersluck]

Had this problem few years ago. Dryer should have a thermal fuse which is before the thermostat and heating element. I looked my dryer up online and found what resistance a good thermal fuse should read and then replaced. But, like someone above stated, there is a reason it keeps happening. I’d check for good air flow out the vent pipe and make sure nothing blocking exhaust.

Have had same issue before

 

[oldfella1962]

It could be a million things, but I had the exact same issue years ago, and it was a bad breaker in the panel.

A bad circuit breaker in the main house circuit breaker panel? If that were the case, I would have no power getting to the dryer at all - it wouldn't even turn on. Then again, I guess if the breaker is providing power to one of the hot wires but not the other, certain functions on the dryer would work, but not others. I would have to take my circuit breaker panel apart to research that. I've had that happen when I was using two or three phase AC before on military equipment. But luckily all voltage was getting to the dryer itself, so this made things easier to troubleshoot.

 

[oldfella1962]

My kit of fuses & switches came in today! Before I installed them, I checked all incoming voltages and had my 240 total and 120 for each hot wire going to where the voltage should go. So far so good! I dried a load of "low heat" clothes and now I'm drying a load of "high heat" towels and other non-shrinkable items.