Today we installed the new bake element in the oven. The "repair video" said it would be an easy 15-minute job, but it wasn't. More like an hour and a half. But there were some special issues. Of course, the first thing we had to do a few days ago was get a new element. That involved figuring out the parts #. We could see some writing dimly on a metal plate at the back of the oven, and I finally was able to photograph it to get the #. Then I could go online and put in that # and - Voila! - the correct part came up. It cost $73! But that is cheaper than calling a repair person. The new element came in two days. It came from a GE Distribution Center in Louisville, KY.
Today, to get the job done, I had to kneel in front of the oven (the oven door having been taken off), with my head in as far as it could go, to see what I was doing. I had trouble maneuvering, so Ellen helped. We needed a flashlight to see, but that proved difficult and eventually we used a work light. You then had to take out two screws that attached that metal plate I mentioned above to the back of the oven - that was easy. The wires from the element went through that plate. When you pulled the plate off, that exposed a very small opening packed with insulation - and two wires went into that opening. The opening was so narrow, you could barely stick your pinkie into it. When you pulled out the wires, you found that a crimped gizmo slid onto a flat metal post attached to the element. In order to remove the old element, that crimped gizmo had to be wiggled off the post with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. The problem was that the wires that the gizmo was attached to were being pulled out with some force, and as soon as you wiggled the gizmo off the post, they disappeared into the insulation! We got the two gizmos off their respective posts, but the gizmos disappeared and there was no way to dig them out of the insulation. What to do? Nothing for it but to pull the range out of the counter and see if one could access those wires from the back of the range. When we pulled out the range (which we hadn't done for many years) we found the mice had been very busy. Under the range were many bits of insulation mixed in with pistachio nuts and lots of nesting material. So that all had to be cleaned up. And both sides of the range were filthy with stuff that had fallen down into the crack between the range and the counter. That all had to be cleaned too. (It didn't have to be cleaned to fix the element, but we weren't going to put the range back filthy).
But that was tangential. The essential question was - could we access the wires that had the crimped gizmo soldered to them? There was a kind of metal box that seemed to cover them, and I found two screws that when unscrewed, allowed that box to be removed (with some effort). That did make the wires accessible, and I could stick my finger into the insulation and feel the narrow opening they had to go through. So it was a two-person job: I pushed the wires through the hole, and Ellen grabbed them (she now had her head inside the oven) and worked the gizmos on to the posts on the new element. We finally got the job done, and got everything back into place again. That included cleaning the oven and the oven door. And putting the range back into the counter. That all took a while. Then the moment of truth - turn the circuit back on and see if the element worked. It did! It glowed red! Yay! We felt very proud of ourselves.
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