My GE Oven Repair

 I purchased a 120 year old house some time ago.  I spent so much money on our kitchen I had to make a few compromises.  I wanted a double wall oven, but I did not want to spend $3000 on a new one.  So what did I do?  What any reasonable man would do and purchased on off of Craigslist!

This oven actually worked very well for about two years. I mean this double wall oven was great! It was a GE Profile model with a convection option.  It was everything we needed with our large family.  Especially at the bargain of $200! Everything was rolling smoothly....

Then all of the sudden the upper oven bake element fried with a lot of sparks and and fizzes.  Luckily after being mezmorized by the sparks for a few, I managed to turn it off.  No big deal, I went to the interweb and found a new bake element.  Ordered!  "Problem will be solved in a few days deary."  So I said to my lovely wife.

Yikes!  Burned right through!

Well the element shows up lightning fast in two short days.  So being the super hero to my family that I am, I slapped it in, in record time.  I turn the oven on to test the new toasty bake element and........it does not get warm.  I can lay my hand on it and it is still room temperature.  My family walked away heads down in disappointment.


I was disgraced.  After all, we have two birthday cakes to bake in a couple of days.  I was in trouble.  Back to the interweb!!!!!!  I did a ton of research on this oven. I found that most people in this situation would replace their control board.  So I went and looked up a new control board for my oven.  It was no longer available.  The sweat was really pouring off of me now.  I was going to have to use my brain!  Gasp!

By the way, before you do any work to your oven, turn off the breaker or unplug it.  I found out there is a constant "L2" wire that is hot to the elements.  Make sure you kill the power before touching it so it doesn't kill you.

Every other element worked in the oven.  The upper broiler element---check, the lower broiler element--check, the lower bake element--check, the convection element-- check.  From my interweb research I found out that a relay turns on the element.  So I decided to pull out my control board and take a look.  

Wow, there are about 7 relays on this board.  Luckily they were labeled quite well on the board.

BK1-Upper bake element
BR1-Upper broiler element
BK2-Lower bake element
BR2-Lower broiler element

The relays for the elements are those four larger black things.

Now I am on to something!  I know it has to be the BK1 relay because that is what turns on the upper oven bake element.  (remember, the power is off)  I popped the black plastic cover off of that relay and checked to make sure it still moved and was not stuck.  It moved.  now I am perplexed.   So I flipped the control board over and found this...

Little orange burn mark!!  Blew the solder connection out!

 Looky there!  What we have here is an open connection.  The solder completely blew off the relay when the element fried.  Now, a quick soldering with my trusty soldering iron.  I then put the board back in and plugged all of the wires back in.  I turn the oven on.....

It is heating up!!!!!

WOW!  It is working!  I turn around to high five my family.....and no one is there.   Oh well, I may have lost my super hero status, but at least the oven works.  Now to start baking those birthday cakes!



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Thanks --Rick
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The Biggest XBMC Secret

 Did you just install XBMC?  Were you not completely wooed by the basic offerings available in the official XBMC plugin repository?  Then you may need to go unofficial.  This is one of those do at your own risk posts. It may be for you, it may not.

If nothing else, this is fun to try from an experimentation point of view. It kind of reminds me of the old days of the big ugly satellite dish.  You can spin that thing around and tune in stuff you did not even know existed.  Including back-haul feeds from sporting events and things that would make me blush....


I personally love all of the offerings in the official XBMC repository.  It is enough for me because I don't really watch that much TV.  I am too busy writing blog posts and trying to save the world from myself. When one is in the mood to sit in front of the TV for days on end one should go to the Navi-X plugin.

Navi-X is what I like to call a super scraper.  When you install it, it is located under the programs menu option in XBMC.  Go to search Navi-X.  Type in a movie you want to see.  Let's say you want to see the 1970's Woody Allen classic Bananas.  Yep, you got it, it is out there, along with about any other movie you would want to see.  (For you die hard Bananas fans, it is also available free on Amazon.com Prime streaming.) Isn't technology amazing? Now this probably is fed from Russia or some other country that does not care about the movie laws of the world, so expect issues, if not now, eventually there will be issues.

It is not just about movies, there are old TV episodes, cartoons, or just about anything else you can think of in this super scraper.  Do some creative searching and see what you come up with.

You can figure out all of this stuff and how to get other plugins for  XBMC at www.xbmchub.com.  Need a quick primer on how to install XBMC and Linux?  Check out a previous post here.

If you like this post and think it would be valuable to someone you know, please share it on the social network of your choice for me, okay? All you have to do is click one of the buttons below. Then add me to your Google+ circles. Thanks --Rick

http://gplus.to/rickbolt
Roku.com - The Affordable On Demand Player! Click here! - 30-day Money Back Guarantee