My air fryer suddenly broke during the last few minutes of cooking. There was suddenly a complete loss of power. I use my air fryer just about everyday and the idea of not having it available was a problem. I immediately found a replacement air fryer on Amazon for only $99. I didn’t complete the order because I wanted to calm down and think about the problem before submitting my order. After thinking about it over night I started looking into why there would be sudden power failure.
What Went Wrong
This problem is way more common that you might think. In just about every appliance that produces heat there is an electronic component called a thermal fuse that is designed to burn out if the temperature inside the applicant reaches a certain temperature. I faced this problem back when my dryer failed. In that case the thermistor failed causing a run away heat up and eventually the thermal fuse blew out shutting down the heating element. In the case of my air fryer, the thermistor could also be bad but I have also read how frequently these thermal fuses fail in air fryers for no reason.
During my research I ran across a video from Fanboyfilms2 which featured a step by step instructions on how to replace the thermal fuse in a similar air fryer. It inspired me to fix mine. It took me about an hour to disassemble mine to the point where I could access the thermal fuse and give it a test using my multi meter. A thermal fuse produces continuity until the fuse blows when it reaches a specific temperature. After the fuse blows there is no more continuity and power is stopped at the blow fuse. A multimeter can measure continuity so a zero reading means the fuse is blown.
Disassembly
There are many screws. Take pictures or label your screws as you remove them. In my case I use magnetic dishes to hold the screws and in some cases the sizes are obvious as to where they go but other times its more difficult to tell. In those cases, I use notes or tape to hold screws in their position for later reassembly.
The bottom of the fryer has two sets of screws that will need to be removed. The first set of 3 screws to remove are highlighted red and hold the cover of the power cord. We will need to push the power cord into the container. The second set of screws, high lighted yellow, hold the bottom of the case to the cooking interior.
The top of the unit comes up with a pry of a screw driver and underneath the cover are another set of 4 screws to remove. Once those screws have been removed you can access the top cover. Simply slide it up and disconnect the leads to the front panel. This will allow the top to move freely and be set aside.
I was able to slide the bottom of the unit’s shell off leaving access to the interior cooking shell and the top burner assembly. The fuse is located inside the burner assembly. There is a set of screws holding the burner cover (highlighted yellow in 2nd picture below). Remove those screws to access the burner element and there are several screws inside that hold the heat shield to the motor assembly. Notice that there are 2 screws (red arrows below) that appear to be associated with the light. These are actually holding the heat shield to the motor assembly. The motor spins the fan which creates the convection process that allows air fryers to “fry”. Also once you can get access to the burner the fan is held tight by a 10 mm nut with reverse threading. Loosen that to pull out the motor assembly from the heat shield. From there the thermal fuse is accessible.
I have already cut mine out for this picture. The red wires in the image below is where the thermal fuse was connected. The second picture below is the actual thermal fuse after I cut it out. The fuse has 216c temperature threshold and I was able to find a pack of 5 for $6 on Amazon.
I used a butt splice component to attach the fuse back in line with the power wire. Butt splice come in different colors for use with different gauge wire. The wire in the air fryer was about 18 gauge so the red color butt splice is perfect. I used one on each end of the thermal fuse. The image below shows what the butt splice looks like when crimped correctly.
After installation and doing a little additional research I learned that thermal fuses can also be installed with a thermal fuse crimp connector which makes a nicer looking connection.
Reassembly
Take your time putting the sections back together. There are certain items of the casing that need to be assembled first. The fan assembly must be put back together. The fan needs to be able to spin freely without scraping along the the grating or the heat shield. Once the fan motor has been reattached then orient the internal fan using the proper spacer and washers that will seat just outside of the heat shield. The protruding threaded spindle is where the interior fan rests and is secured with the 10 mm nut.
The second area I got tripped up was having enough slack in the wiring to reassemble the cooking tub to the exterior case. I must have twisted the wiring because I could not get the case to line up and I ended up cutting the zip ties holding the wiring in a orderly bunch to create enough slack to slide the case back into position.
Another caution about assembling the top cover. There is a rectangular piece of plastic that was removed during disassembly that must be installed into the housing from the interior. This is the exhaust port. I didn’t specifically remove it but it fell out of place when the top was originally separated from the case.
Finally, the last trouble area during reassembly was the door. I removed the door after removing the bottom case. The door is designed to come off for cleaning. The problem is the portion of the hinge that I removed was covered by the outer case. I had to remove the case again to reattach the door. Instead the screws exposed just inside the door are the correct screws to remove to separate the door from the unit without having to remove the case. There are two sets for 4 screws, one on the left and the other on the right.
Conclusion
This project seemed difficult at first because of the effort required to removed all those screws and the perceived complexity of the components of the air fryer itself. There is a lot of stuff going on under the hood. I took my time and step by step I was able to locate the component, test it, repair it in under 4 hours over 3 days. The longest wait was on prime delivery of the replacement fuse. Plus I spent more time during reassembly for reasons mentioned above. Now that I know the appliance I believe I could do the job in about an hour. Plus how great is it that instead of throwing more waste in the land fill, I saved myself $99 by replacing effectively a $1 part.