I am glad you like your new dryer but the construction and durability of your old dryer was much better than the GE dryers of the last 15 years or so. There is a gap all the way around the front of your new GE that gets bigger at the bottom half and starts staining clothes that get caught there, I just fixed one last week that was 9 years old and it is much more expensive and less satisfactory a repair than replacing the rear drum seal on a WP built dryer.

Many American dryer drums are one piece, the GE that we are talking about the only thing that doesn't revolve is the front of the machine and the door. The most successful and safest dryer designs have stationary fronts and or back areas. All MTs after 1976, all WP built after 1966, all Nogre built after 1980, all Speed Queen home and commercial after 1980. Having stationary areas where the heat enters the drum, this allows better clothing protection from excessive heat of having the whole rear of the drum  become super heated. It is also a less expensive way to build a dryer which is one of many reasons that 80+% of US homes have and use dryers. US dryers are by far and away the best in the world.

That is not a "new" design.  I have a 1999 GE/Camco-sourced F&P DE04 dryer that looks exactly the same, and a GE DS4500EB0WW manuf'd 2002 per the S/N.  The GE I got for free, and refurbished it with $210 in parts -- front drum support & bearings, rear bearing sleeve, inner door panel, heating element, front air duct/filter housing, idler pulley.

I think that there are several factors that are allowing the price of new dryers to equal that of the matching dryer.

1 People are so used to having a dryer that they are willing to pay the price.

2 People wrongly assume that a new dryer will work better and be more energy efficient.

3 the energy-star washers are being subsidized by the goverment, state, utilities which makes them cheaper than they would otherwise be.

4 The building and assembly of the new washer designs that have come out is very automated compared to the building and assembly of clothes dryers.

5 The manufactories are making more money on the sale of dryers than washers which is way they are being pushed in pairs. I am sure that they would love to sell you a new stove to go with that new washer and dryer LOl.

In many cases it will be cheaper and work better to keep your old dryer or buy a more sensible rear control machine than buying one that matches the new washer. Many new dryers are actually smaller inside than the older wider machines and a larger diameter drum seems to work better than the deeper ones in the newer 27" machines.

Some Maytag Bravos dryers have a high-velocity belt-driven blower that makes for longer venting allowances and/or faster drying.

During periods A & B one heater should not be cutting on and off at such a low outlet temperature, you likely have too long an exhaust system or other problem with the exhaust system. If you want to get the best life and performance out of this dryer make sure your exhaust installation meets GEs recommendations in every way, A bad exhaust system likely contributed to the problem with rusting rear seals on the old KM dryer.

Hi Robert I would love to visit sometime and we hope you get a chance to come here also. I am basing my claims of superiority of US built dryers from my experience of repairing and selling laundry appliances for over 35 years here in the Washington D C area. This being an international city I have had quite a few opportunities to get my hands on European and other imported dryers over the years and in almost ever case I have ended up selling them for almost nothing , giving them away or usually just scraping them.

Whats different in a nutshell

1 they are only about 1/2 half the size in drum capacity [ not a enough room for loads of 10 pair of mens jeans or king size comforters].

2 They are seldom more than 3000 watts [ slow ]

3 Gas dryers are almost unheard of [ too large a carbon foot print from thier use ]

4 They are very difficult to work on [ not designed for longevity ]

5 They are often noisey

5 The blowers are not powerful enough to exhaust air through 15-30 feet of exhaust pipe without clogging quickly.

Almost all US dryers are also used in commercial applications, I would love to see how many of the European 24" machines are sold with a coin box on them.

How long is your vent system and how many elbows are in it? The cycling of one heater so early in the drying cycle does not seem correct. This is one of the major reasons that I have never liked dryers that have the heater elements right behind or right in front of the dryers drum. GE is cycling one heater with the inlet thermostat to keep the rear drum temperature lower to prevent scorching clothing and dryer fires. It would be interesting to try drying a load with the vent disconnected and see if the one heater cycles so early in the drying cycle.

Only GE and Frigidare still put the heaters so close to the clothes load and as a result they have to use very sensitive thromostats to prevent the above mentioned problems with clothing damage and fires. Too make matters worse both GE and Frigidare dryers have small lint filters and if you are drying a very linty load it can get quite restricted during one load.

MT discontinued this poor placement of the heater element in 1976 when they finely discontinued the HOH dryer and Frigidare got rid of this problem when they introduced the 1-18 dryers in 1970. Even European dryers separate the heater element from the clothes by placing it in a metal box away from the drum. The heater element in an electric dryer easily hits 1600 degrees or more hotter than the flame in a gas dryer.

On a full sized WP built electric dryer the heater will not cycle even once until the exhaust or blower housing thermostat is satisfied. This is one of the many problems with Consumer Reports as they rate these GE dryers highly but they are tested under perfect conditions, they even rated the worst dryer on the market in north America the Frigidare as a best buy a few years ago. Thier engineers should come on service calls with me for one week and see all the burned up heaters and rear drum bearings in GE and Frigidare dryers that we see.

Most WP 29" and all 27" dryers do not tapper the inlet heat entering the drum, however some electronically controlled 29" dryers have dual heaters and some also have a thermistor on the heater box that controls the inlet temperature for  low temperature loads and to save a small amount of energy on certain control settings.

The inlet temperature can be far higher on a WP or other stationary bulk head dryers because the clothing is never in constant contact with the inlet area. The clothing is always quickly passing the inlet. On revolving back dryer drums, including the European models with a separate box the entire rear of the drum can get very hot. This is more likely to happen when the load is very large, the exhaust is too long or otherwise restricted or when very linty items are being dried and the filter clogs during the cycle.