On the 17th of October, I mistook the ‘Self-Clean’ function of our Whirlpool for something other than self-destruct, resulting in The Oven Of Darkness, an expensive metal cabinet with a glass door that remained permanently locked since it was locked when the thing died a death that filled the living area with a thin haze of smoke only slightly more pleasant than having a dead oven.

The Thermal Fuse.

The initial investigation found that the thermal fuse was blown. The new one arrived and I fitted it on October 25th, otherwise known as St. Crispin’s Day, or the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, but I digress.

With the thermal fuse in, the control board received power for the first time since my calamitous reliance upon the functional integrity of the oven’s self-cleaning operation, and with that, another problem was revealed.

On running a self-diagnostic, the MRC board itself seemed to have been damaged in the self-destruction process.

One of those would cost $336.10, including tax and shipping, and with a 10% discount.

The Receipt.

At this point, the dear wife became somewhat aggravated that the first time we tried the self-clean, the oven blew itself up. So she called Whirlpool to see if it was under any kind of warranty.

The helpful representative at Whirlpool took her call and reported that the unit was out of the manufacturer’s one-year warranty, but that there was another warranty it might have qualified for if we could prove that we bought it in 2017 rather than, as his records showed, 2012. Our house wasn’t built then, we didn’t live in Tennessee and, the odds are, depending on what month he was talking about, we didn’t have any plans to move here.

So, I took it upon myself to go to Lowe’s and put their Asset Protection manager through to the trouble of finding a proof of purchase for us. He worked very hard at it and found one that we could provide to Whirlpool to prove the oven was bought when we said it was. All I needed to do was call them up and sort it out.

Whirlpool.

First thing that following Monday morning, I called them up. Their system was down and the young chap on the other end didn’t seem confident he could tell me what time it was, let alone have access to any details the previous representative had left on file. He recommended calling back in an hour.

I’m not one to hang around, so I used the chat feature a short time later, rather than spend another half an hour on hold.

That was where things got interesting.

The on-line rep gave me a copy of the manufacturer’s warranty that we knew had already expired, so I asked:

This is the one-year manufacturer warranty. The rep my wife spoke to last week suggested that the MRC board might be covered under a five-year parts warranty. Is this not the case?

Seemed a simple question, but I got no definitive answer.

…and then I asked again…

So, just so I’m not misunderstanding you, there is no warranty of any kind under which we could get any replacement part for this oven? Is that correct?

Simple question … no definitive answer , so I ask again…

Okay, but just so I can be completely clear on this one point: there is no other warranty applicable for this unit?

…and still no definitive answer so I ask again. Four more times, to make seven in total. I won’t bore you with each and every single one, but I will highlight how I approached the inquiry:

As soon as you can confirm that there is no other warranty, I can wish you a wonderful afternoon and be on my way.

…

I have to assume that there is a policy that prevents you from answering my question.

Then, in the twenty-eighth minute of the chat, a full fifteen minutes after I first asked for a simple clarification that there was no applicable warranty at all, I got it.

No warranty.

The MRC Board.

Having gotten no joy about whatever parts warranty the original Whirlpool rep might have been on about, I sourced a new MRC board from Sears Parts Direct.

Swapping it out was almost as easy as swapping out the thermal fuse and had a similar result: the oven powered up and functioned as a digital clock, but that was about it.

A second self-diagnostic test resulted in blame being attributable to the oven cut off thermostat – basically a temperature limiter – and the broiler element.

$127.77 for the pair.

The Thermostat and Element.

The thermostat arrived quickly, but the element was on back-order amd didn’t show up until last Thursday, November 14th.

That’s when I got to work.

Both parts were surprisingly easy to fit. The thermostat is held on the back by two screws and the element is held inside the oven by two screws.

So I fired it up and…

The thermostat error went away.

The element error did not.

This is when an eye for detail was called for. Here’s a quick look at the schematic with my notes of the two original errors annotated in what passes for handwriting.

The broiler element, ‘Broil – 3600W‘ is wired to the control board connector by two wires (duh!) one being blue – BU – and one being black – BK – you can see this one annotated at K2-P1-2, it’s the same color wire at K1-P3-1. That’s great, but my wires were swapped at the connector.

This means that, since I hadn’t swapped those wires around and nobody else in this house is going to open up the oven and mess with just a couple of wires, the connector configuration changed between my old unit (W10283075) and the new, replacement (W10550510), the designer has swapped the wires around in the connector – the connector is polarized and only fits one way around, so Neanderthals can’t reverse the wiring and keep the oven from working.

So I swapped them around and refitted the original broiler element…

And Finally…

Here’s the result in two forms. First the self-diagnostic result…

…and dinner last Thursday evening…

In Conclusion.

Anyone who’s not unimpressed by my technical ability – once the new broiler element is returned, this comes to a $400 repair on a $1600 oven – will be forgiven for wondering what this has to do with a personal accountability blog that I’m keeping to make sure I maintain focus on writing. The answer:

Nothing whatsoever.

But, we’d been without an oven for four weeks and, when I finally got it to warm up at all, Thanksgiving was just two weeks away, so I feel justified in being self-impressed enough to blog about this oven.

Meanwhile, I have been working on setting up the outline for Lock Out Tag Out, and with a few bits of fine tuning, I hope to have an outline to run through before the close of the week. I won’t have everything done, but I’ll have better visibility of where the holes are than I did with The Old Man.

Up Next…

I look forward to writing a post about that next week. But for now, I’m happy that I can bake some garlic bread for dinner tonight, and that I can roast and bake and broil to my hearts content, and that I will be able to roast a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Categories: My Life, Repair Jobs

Tags: Oven, Repair Jobs, Repairs, Thanksgving