ranger 1 -

The part I bought was the drum belt. It was cheap, and I'd helped a few friends replace them on older dryers so it was an "expected failure." Later assessment of why mine lasted a lot longer than the ones in the "friends'" dryers was that they weren't using them right, and were making "french fried skivvies" by running everything on "max heat" settings to hurry up the drying. Ours had a "humidistat" sensor that would shut off things when it detected "dryness," and we used the "dry/more dry" setting mostly instead of the "hot/light-my-fire/burn-the-clothes" settings.

Dumping a lot of "heat" (enthalpy) into the dryer doesn't raise the drum temperature much if there's water to abosrb the watts and be evaporated, but dumping a lot of watts in after things are mostly dry raisees the drum temp fairly rapidly, and "ages" the belt (and the clothes) to destruction fairly quickly, especially for belts with older compositions.

Ours also was bought at around the time when the makers started adding a little silicone in the belt composition, so the original one had a lot better heat resistance than some of the older ones I'd helped replace.

The "noise" she was hearing was a "ratchet" that was in the timer. A "clock" pulsed a solenoid that clicked a ratchet drive to step the "timing" along through the cycle, and a cam driven by the ratchet moved switches that told the innards what to do next. I don't think they make them that way much anymore, but I expect to be "in my hundreds" by the time I need to get a new dryer to find out what's "modern" 20-30 years from now. (I'll let you know then, if I find anything new.)

John