Hotpoint TDC62, Intermittent Drying, Fixed

I’m not a regular on here, but I thought I’d post a success story 🙂

2-3 years back I bought a Hotpoint TDC62 as “spares or repair” for £28 on ebay. A set of new stats and it has given me good service until recently. The machine would intermittently stop drying (although remain running). Sometimes it would dry a full load, sometimes it would hardly get up to temperature. Recently it has been a lot worse, with the drying light only staying lit for a few seconds after it started running.

I read around here about people having trouble with the control board. Some have scrapped the machines due to the cost of a new board, others have attempted replacing the relays.

It had occurred to me that the intermittent nature of this could be down to faulty solder joints somewhere (I’ve come across this in everything from printers to car instrument clusters).

I took the control board out this afternoon (remove top and side cover). Looking at the joints with a x15 jewellers magnifying glass I could see a crack on at least one joint, although not obvious. I reflowed all the joints behind the relays (work of a few minutes) and what do you know, the machine is working perfectly again :rotfl:

So I thought I’d post and maybe this will pop up in Google for someone else. No doubt this board will be used in many different makes and models. Fingers crossed for a few more years from my £28 dryer.