How to Replace a Bad Electric Stove Heating Coil
I opened up the oven door and the darn coil was split in two and burning. I had to flip the breaker switch to put the fire out. The heating coil in my oven actually split in two. .It burned itself into two pieces. I had never seen that happen before but it is a very old oven. It wasn’t a hard task to fix it but did take some time. It was the first time I needed to fix an oven part but I did learn a lesson I can pass on to you.
First, the coil is connected to the backside of the inside of the oven. The two ends of the coil are each supported by a bracket where the ends go through a hole in the oven wall. The brackets had hex screws to hold them in place on my oven. I didn’t have a ratchet set to use , so I used my vise grips which were good enough. It was a small vise grip. I don’t think I could have done the job with a larger sized vise grip.
After unscrewing the hex nuts I pulled the coil out. The ends of the coil were connected to the ends of wires that were clamped together. I disconnected each of the coil ends (just pulled them apart). I thought that was pretty easy. I did think this was a great opportunity to clean the bottom of the oven as there was no coil in the way. After doing that little chore I went to the Sears store near me (Sears, it is a Kenmore) and purchased a new coil.
Got back from the store, went to the oven, picked up one end of the wire and pushed the end of the coil into the slot of the clamp on the end of the wire. Here is the lesson I learned. In concentrating on the one end of the wire I was working on, I wasn’t thinking of the other wire. While working on the one end the other end of the other wire went through the hole in the back of the oven. The hole was just small enough for the wire to fit. No room to put my finger or some tool to get hold of the wire and pull it back through the hole. The uncomfortable kneeling position I was in was really starting to me some pain.
I had to pull the oven out from the wall. Of course I saw several items I thought I had lost lying on the floor where the oven had been. Also a bit of dust I had to clean up. After that little clean up job I had to disconnect a metal flange that was protecting the wiring for the oven. This metal piece also hex nuts holding it to the back of the oven. There was not much room between the head of the screw and the side of the flange. Using the vise grips I had to make like a quarter of a turn on the screw each time, it seemed to take forever. If I had the proper tool (Ratchet Set0 it would have been much easier and faster.
After finally disconnecting the flange. I got hold of the end of the wire I needed and pushed it back through the hole in the back of the oven. Made sure the end of the wire wasn’t going to slip back through the hole (used duck tape). Screwed the flange back into place at the back of the oven Then I just had to push the end of this side of the coil into the clamp on the end of the wire.
Having to deal with that flange took about 45 minutes. Replacing the coil took about 15 minutes. Not counting the time it took to go to the store for a new coil. If I had been more aware of the potential problem of the one end of the wire going through the hole in the first place, 15 minutes would have been a nice timeframe for this little repair job.
That is my advice to you if you need to do a similar type of repair. Watch out or secure the end of a second wire before working on the first end.
