To grease or not to Grease

[scotrob171]

I recently been called out to Hotpoint TCFS73BGG Condenser Tumble dryer to Replace belt, and while apart completely cleaned all fluff etc from unit, putting back together applied a little grease to back bearing , Tested appliance all working ok. Couple of days later customer smelt burning and decided to phone hotpoint , anyway hotpoint engineer said fluff was stIcking to grease on bearing and causing the burning, and he said bearing on a Hotpoint does not need grease and he said he confirmed this with tech back at hotpoint. Can this be right ?

[murv]

Usually use a drop of light oil on the teardrop this should be absorbed into the bearing.

I have seen a number of the older square roulon bearings with grease on them. Never had a complaint.

Murv…

[stratfordgirl]

scotrob171 wrote:hotpoint engineer said fluff was stIcking to grease on bearing and causing the burning, and he said bearing on a Hotpoint does not need grease and he said he confirmed this with tech back at hotpoint. Can this be right ?

This is complete nonsense – how can a bit of fluff on the bearing create a burning smell? The smell will have been due to a bit of disturbed dust having got blown onto the heater during the next cycle – an inevitable temporary by-product of clearing loose dust from airways.

As for grease, this may no longer be considered necessary on current Hotpoint dryers, but perhaps if they did use it, the pathetic undersized bearings and shafts they use might just last a little longer. Hotpoint still list their bearing grease C00250321 as a part for virtually all pre-2005 Hotpoint dryers. I still use a tube of this that I bought in 2005.

[scotrob171]

stratfordgirl wrote:

This is complete nonsense – how can a bit of fluff on the bearing create a burning smell? The smell will have been due to a bit of disturbed dust having got blown onto the heater during the next cycle – an inevitable temporary by-product of clearing loose dust from airways.

As for grease, this may no longer be considered necessary on current Hotpoint dryers, but perhaps if they did use it, the pathetic undersized bearings and shafts they use might just last a little longer. Hotpoint still list their bearing grease C00250321 as a part for virtually all pre-2005 Hotpoint dryers. I still use a tube of this that I bought in 2005.

Yes completely agree with you, I was asked to replace the belt, but as you know when you open up these condenser dryers there is always all the muck to clean away or the machine will not work properly, So this is what I did, only to put altogether and found ” No Heat” so off with the cover and managed to reset the trip, Put together again and tested running for 10 minutes. because of the state of it never been service/cleaned before and the heater not working it accumulated some fluff around the heater so cleaned as much of it as I could only for the rest to be burnt off when running. Customer did phone me and I offered to go back and look at it, But in her wisdom she decided ” Oh this dryer is one of the faulty Hotpoints” maybe I will get a new one out of this, and contacted Hotpoint, who must have panicked and sent a engineer out very next day. The tiny amount of grease I used on the teardrop as you said would never cause any problem. Thanks for your response.

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