Having ANY dryer or machine work for 13 years with no service calls, Somebody is doing something RIGHT. So its 27 years old, good4U. You probably have a lint build up just under the lower heating element and thats what you are smelling. You didn't mention how many are using this dryer, not that it matters if its 27 years old, and hasn't been worked on in 13 years. It probably needs the front glides and rear cheap bearing, and belt, and idler pully. So this dryer doesn't owe you a cent, for all these parts, and labour, the tech should be able to do this in a hour call out, if you are not way out in the boon docks. Because the tech has not opened it up to clairify the cost, lets say all these parts and 1 hours labour, at 60 hour to 80.00 that some charge now. And parts at 80.00 as I don't know what they charge in your area, as I am in Canada. Most of the new high end dryers a call out for them is 150.00 plus and they are new, yours is 27. Always good to hear about the old stuff still doing its thing. Brent@CanBC

MDE5806AZW Service Manual 8 MB

Good News! The service guy came and found the door switch wire was loose. He reattached and tightened it and, Voila! a working dryer. Badish news: the service charge was $65 plus additional repair(???)charge balance came to $140! It still beats replacing the work-horse duo!

"... and it sounds like an airplane taking off at times." Kath, the Whirlpool washer I mentioned did that. It was so loud that our neighbor could hear it! It finally started spitting out oil from underneath. The repair tech that came to look at it said water would be the next thing to leak out. Sure enough, it did. The repair cost was $600, and he advised me to just buy a new one. That's not to say yours will do the same thing. I have friends with loud washers that didn't start leaking oil or water. Some are just loud...period. For your fridge, some people here on Houzz have mentioned problems with the gray/black finish scratching easily. You might check into that, although they could look nice with white cabinets. Also, who's to know if that color will still be available if/when you need to replace an appliance. That's not an issue with white or stainless. If you don't like stainless, white could work. However, it can be hard to match white appliances and white cabinets. Appliance white is pretty stark and can often look "off" with the white most people want for cabinets. Just something to think about.