This turns out to be a burned out “baking element” (as opposed to broiling element, which is fine) inside a pink stove which among other things identifies itself as a RBE-533 Frigidaire, Product Of General Motors oven, which I now understand is probably really a range. Something about having burners on top makes it that.
I first suspected our RBE-533 was not operating correctly when it failed to heat the meatloaf inside oven and the green beans in a pan on top of the thing on the front left burner. It worked for a while, because things started to get warm, but I must have missed a pop or a bang of some kind because right after the element blew apart as shown (also making the mess as shown-I’m not that bad), things stopped getting warmer and I could touch either the element inside the oven or any of the burners on the top without feeling any temperature at all.
After a quick turn to the microwave and a hurried dinner, I returned to the scene of the crime and discovered that the oven element had exploded. Aha. That didn’t explain why the lights still worked but it might have something to do with why the top burners were not working.
I find that somehow I have become very insecure without my cooking life and I began to fret. I know we’re not replacing this oven because despite the fact that it turns out to be fifty years old, it is pink, and it matches the pink twirly stools in the kitchen and all of that matches the entire original house. While these are not necessarily my values exactly, this machine is still somehow now my turf (I do all the cooking here) and I must somehow fix it.
I did Internet research. After all, if I can’t do that, what can I do, and I discovered many interesting things about the RBE-533, including a nice pdf of its owner’s manual. The manual didn’t seem to acknowledge the possibility that everything stops working at once, so I decided to concentrate on the burned out element, as it seemed central to the problem.
That part is stamped with a number, and there’s at least one web site that tells us the number has been changed over the years to a new number: 5309950886. That’s good, we discover, because those are available from a variety of sources, including Amazon and eBay, the two venues to which I am likely to turn if all things are equal. The only thing is: part 5309950886 doesn’t have a bar between the two prongs that plug into the electrical stuff, and nobody’s talking about what that bar that WAS on our original piece used to do, so perhaps it somehow became unnecessary. At least the advice to several angst-ridden owners like myself with the same problem was always the same, they always referred to that OEM number and no other variations or possibilities.
Having become unabashedly attached to my pink oven in the middle of a meatloaf, I lost some sleep and hatched a plan. I will get up in the morning and go into town. I never do that, at least not in that order.
I arrived at an appliance store with a national name and they refered me to a fixing place (telephone conversation) that has a national base and after they confused me a little with somebody who lives in Idaho (I live in Iowa) and failed to gather some other information, we finally got to the part where I can give them a model number and they can schedule a maintenance call for December 27. That’ll be ninety bucks whether it winds up fixing anything or not.
December 27 doesn’t fit well into my holiday plans.
I went uptown again to another appliance place, element in hand. When they heard the model number of the oven, they told me they couldn’t even reference that. It’s too old. After some ruminating about what that might mean, I tell them: try #53099500886 in your computer there, and bing! there it was-the element without the middle prong that might not do anything. Thirty bucks. I said, ok, if I can figure out what’s wrong with the top burners I want one. Sensing a thirty dollar sale in the middle of their nine hundred dollar merchandise, the guy suggests: check your fuses. I tell him there are oven lights that are still working. He tells me the range has two power sources.
Oh…………………….I know where that fuse box is. It’s in the back of a closet and all I have to do is move a bunch of framed pictures and Christmas decorations (yes, those could be out anyway) between the box and me and after some quick geometry and other feats, I move the junk, find the box, find a fuse that looks different, replace it, and nothing changes.
I return to the appliance store. I tell the guy I replaced this fuse (in my hand) and nothing happened. He connects me to the guy who actually fixes ovens. We’re standing there looking at each other. This doesn’t happen often enough.
He looks at the fuse and says “it’s not that fuse. That’s a 30 amp fuse, you need to find a blown 50 amp fuse”. I find out there are more fuses in the box, not all of them look like mine, and sure enough, after I turn off the whole house pulling out the fuse drawers with the bigger fuses, I find it. There’s another one of that kind handy. I plug it in, the top of the stove works again. Oh hooray, thank you.
I reset all the digital stuff that I turned off everywhere, determined that my computer didn’t die in its unexpected crash, and called the store: yup, you’re right, it was that fuse, please order the replacement thirty dollar element.
I called the national fixing place back and told them they could cancel my December 27 date, I have solved the problem. They told me they have nothing in the system about that and request I call back again tomorrow to make sure there is still nothing in the system, and if there isn’t, I won’t need to cancel it, the order got lost. That’s frustrating, because “we” had a lot of trouble putting that order into the system; it took easily a half hour or more.
Still, unless that middle bar it doesn’t have turns out to actually do something, the problem is virtually solved, although we must wait a day or two for the part. That’s nothing unusual, I’m waiting until Thursday for headlight assemblies for my car.
And if it will just go back to heating stuff again, especially in time for the big holiday coming up, even if I burn myself on it, I will never curse or yell at my pink stove again, even if that doesn’t fit my image.
Maybe I’ll get a 60s apron.
