Vintage Hotpoint Oven

[broomvac]

Hey All,

My girlfriend’s oven is this presumably vintage Hotpoint unit. I know all about old vacuums but very little about old ovens, so I can’t figure out why it sometimes takes forever to preheat. It’s as if sometimes one of the elements (or relays?) is not activating. Sometimes it preheats in no time, whereas other times it takes ages. This morning is one of those times. This is delaying our biscuits.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[justjunque]

Hey broomvac,

Apparently, you have everyone stumped.
Are you a member over at AW? There's probably more electric range experts over there.
I just checked in to say that I hope your biscuits turned out okay!

 

[texaskirbyguy]

Bad/burned connections or bad thermostat would be my first guesses without seeing a wiring diagram, the unit itself, or even an exploded view of the exact model.

Get an exploded view of the model from online parts distributors and then you can see the parts in the circuit and go from there.

These units are about a simple as they come and are easy to repair. Parts for these style ovens should be fairly interchangeable and thus still available.

With as crappy as new ovens are, this is certainly worth fixing (if the inside is as nice looking as the outside!)

 

[human]

Yeah, what texaskirbyguy said...

That range is dead simple, and that's a really good thing. Heck, it doesn't even have a timer, so no circuit boards inside. Manufacturers had to quit making them like that because there was no way they could set them up to self-destruct just after the warranty expires, forcing customers into replacing the whole appliance because the circuit boards had already become obsolete and no longer available on a highly accelerated schedule.

Had I not had a home warranty at the time, I would have been faced with the same choice with my stove, an early '90s vintage glass top Lady Kenmore, about five years ago. The warranty company offered me either a $300 cash payout to go toward replacing the stove or sending the circuit board out to be rebuilt, and I chose the latter. The technician who removed and installed the board said I made the right choice. Since the board had to be rebuilt by hand, it was probably better than a new or new old stock one that had been made on an assembly line.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Probably 1990s era

We had a GE from 1992 that looked similar to that, but had dial timers and a self clean oven.

Looks like that replaced a 40” range by the hood width.

 

[broomvac]

All,

Thank you for your responses! I completely forgot I asked about this because it stopped acting up. It started preheating as expected. I guess we scared the ghost out of it!

If it acts up again, I will take a look into schematics and throw some plausible parts at it.

JustJunque—our biscuits turned out great, despite the slow preheat that day.