The plastic border on my main dryer lint trap completely cracked down the middle last week, and the mesh screen was starting to fray along the edges. Leaving it like that means a ton of loose clothing fuzz gets sucked straight past the filter and clogs up the main exhaust pipe, which is a massive fire hazard. I ordered a replacement filter assembly online that claimed to fit the exact model slot perfectly. What a complete joke.
The new plastic frame was just a tiny fraction of an inch too thick to slide into the narrow slot inside the dryer door. Every time I tried to push it down, the housing would stick halfway up and jam completely solid, preventing the main dryer door from even closing. I spent twenty minutes kneeling on the laundry room floor with a piece of rough sandpaper, manually grinding down the thick plastic ridges on the side of the new filter casing until my fingers were completely raw.
When I finally got the frame to slide down into the track, the little rubber seal along the top edge kept rolling over and popping out of its groove. I had to use a flat pocket knife to slowly tuck the rubber gasket into the channel millimeter by millimeter while pushing the filter down at the exact same time. The plastic casing scratched my knuckle pretty bad on the sharp interior edge of the drum panel during the last push, which didn’t help things at all.
The new lint screen finally sits completely flush inside the door slot now and the main latch clicks shut without any forcing. The mesh captures the loose fuzz properly during the spin cycle and pulls out smoothly when you need to clean it off. The dryer filter is fully working now.