GE Oven Cooks Again

The oven in our big GE canning stove stopped working. It wasn't the heating element or even the electronics. The cause was a broken plastic piece in between the control pad and the pushbutton switch on the circuit board. Let me tell you the story of how I diagnosed and solved this problem.

I "married into" this stove several years ago. My mother in law brought it out from Minnesota for us. It has served us well, though one of the burners doesn't work. I replaced the burners and terminals last Fall, but that one is still out of commission. Anyways, a month ago the "up" button for the oven and timer controls stopped working. The plastic overlay had broken out a year or two before. But now it wouldn't respond to any inputs.

Turns out there is a row of plastic "pushers" attached by living hinges between the plastic overlay and the switches on the circuit board. This one had broken off at the hinge and fallen out of place. I thought about carving a new pusher out of wood that would be held in place. But in the end I decided to use a combination of super glue and packing tape to hold the original pusher in place. I also put glue on the broken area of the living hinge, but that glue didn't hold.

The two circuit boards are held in place by plastic fingers. I gently pried those fingers open to remove the circuit boards. When I put it back together, the boards snapped into place.

Now the oven works again!

In case anyone else has a problem like this, the stove model number is GE JCP67Y6WW. The control unit is a Robert Shaw FRID: 318010010. Also 100-01170-06. I imagine there are similar units that might fail in the same way.

It's been almost exactly a month since I fixed it and the oven is still going strong! We are careful to push that one button gently. Well, we are careful to push all the buttons gently, now that we know they can only stand up to about 20 years of use. I am hoping to get many more years out of it.

Its good to fix things when one can instead of buying a new one, well done you!

That fix lasted less than a year. Which is disappointing but not very surprising. This time I cut a piece of wood that is held captive between the housing and the circuit board. It is wide enough that it will still contact the button no matter how it moves around inside.

Getting an extra year out of something sounds like a win unless the repair cost dollars.

Nice to get an extra year out of it.

I don't know if it's possible for this oven make.  

When our oven went, we discovered we could buy a new buttons and brain unit for about $250.  It lasted about 10 or 12 years before it started to get confused.  Even then, so long as we only had one of the double ovens on at a time, it did okay.

It's worth checking it out as many makes they sell in Europe now have to make the parts available directly to the consumer.

Right, I was able to replace three of the infinite switches that control the stovetop burners. I used a kit from Robertshaw that can replace many styles of infinite switch. The picture shows the new white one next to the old black switch.

Robertshaw made the oven control board as well, but I haven't found a replacement for that yet.