279834 Gas Dryer Valve Ignition Solenoid Coil Kit Compatible for Whirlpool

Fast delivery. I didn't want to do the job!!

Our Kenmore gas clothes dryer had developed an issue with not getting the load of laundry dry during a "normal" drying cycle as it had previously been doing. The burner would light initially on a timed dry cycle but when it turned off itermittently like it normally does, it would not reignite the burner. After watching a couple of troubleshooting videos on YouTube, I found out that it's normally one of 4 things. First, I went and got a set of dryer lint catcher chute & hose brushes and cleaned the built up lint out. Unfortunately, although it was full of built up lint, that was not the issue. So next it had to be one of three components: the operating thermostat, high temp. thermostat,or the gas valve solenoids (2). Fortunately, Amazon has a vendor that sells the thermostats and an addtional component as a set for about $12 and the set of solenoids were only about $10 so I ordered all of them. YouTube also has tutorials on how to check components (a resistance check w/multimeter) as well as how to replace the parts. The job involved removing the back panel for the thermostats and the front for the solenoids which I did last. Wouln't you know that it was the solenoids that were bad. So, for about $32 (including the brush set) and about 1 hour and 15 minutes time I did my own successful repair and probably saved at least $150 for a tech to come do the repair. The job is about a 2 wrench difficulty on a 5 wrench scale but was really fairly simple. Buy your own parts and do the work, THAT'S how you save money.

My Kenmore gas dryer would initially fire up the gas burner, but once the coils on the gas valve got hot the burner would fail to ignite again until the coils cooled down. This would make for extremely long dry cycles. You could see the gas igniter glowing red hot through the little removable plastic window on the lower left front of the dryer but the burner would not fire up. This indicated everything was working except for the gas valve opening to supply gas. From this point the problem could have been either the sensor that detects the gas igniter is hot to supply power to the gas valve or the gas valve itself. From reading on the web I found out that if the gas eventually does come on when the dryer has cooled down then it is most likely these coils that are bad. When they get hot and they are worn out they no longer produce a strong enough magnetic field to operate the gas valve. Once they cool down they do produce a magnetic field sufficient to open the valve. So I was 99.9% sure these little guys were the problem when I ordered them. Once I replaced them the dryer worked just like new.Replacing them only took 30 minutes. I say this because I took the time to thoroughly vacuum the inside of the dryer while I had it open. I have had a gas dryer ignite lint inside once before in my life so I like to open them up every couple of years and vacuum all the lint up. Opening the dryer is really easy. Just look for a video on You Tube like I did to see how to do it. And just think you are probably going to save yourself $100 for a service call from an appliance repair man. That is pretty much the going rate in the Philadelphia suburbs to have somebody come to your house. And usually that gives you 30 minutes of free labor which starts when they leave the previous job so chances are the bill will be even higher.

Like some of the other reviews, my dryer would heat up at first but after about 20 min. or so the ignitor would come on, but the gas valve would not open to allow the flame to continue heating. Normal operation is the gas valve is turned on and off by these coils several times during the drying cycle as this is how a dryer maintains the temperatue for drying your clothes. It is supposed to work just like your house furnace, when it gets to the right temp. it shuts off and then comes back on again when the temperature drops below a certain point and will cycle like this until the timer runs through the whole drying cycle. Well after mine heated up and ran for a while, 2-3 cycles on the gas valve, the coils became hotter and would not be strong enough to turn on the gas valve. So I did like another person did and researched the internet and found that this appeared to be a common problem for gas dryers. It makes sense once you think about how many times it is required to cycle on and off for each drying cycle and the fact that it gets pretty warm where the gas valve is. So for under $10 including shipping, I replaced the coils in less than 10 min. (I had already cleaned the dryer inside when I was troubleshooting the problem before) and we were back in business and saved myself $150 on the repair for not having to call a repair man and be charged labor and inflated cost for the coil kit. Or I could say I saved about $900 from just going a getting a new dryer when I really didnt need one. I hope you find this review helpful as I did not completly understand the operation of the gas valve until I did the research.