This here is my stove. It came with the house. I probably wouldn't have bought a Samsung if it had been my choice, but as of yet I have no particular reason to get rid of it.
But that doesn't mean it's working perfectly. Far from it, in fact: it has two issues with the oven.
One of those issues is that it hasn't been preheating quite as well as it should be, and it tends to sound a little hesitant when I first turn it on. Like the igniter will come on, then the gas will start flowing, but sometimes the gas will stop and start again a few times, sort of hesitating, and the burner will flame out and reignite.
But thankfully it's pretty easy to just have a little look inside, only these two screws at the back here need to be removed to get the bottom panel of the oven off.
We've still got this diffuser to get through, and it's a bit cracked down the middle but still serviceable.
And finally we can see the burner assembly.
I was concerned that it might be rusted or clogged, but it seems to be fine.
Which is nice because a new burner is around $100 or so. And that kind of confirms my suspicion that it's probably the hot surface igniter that's on its way out.
It certainly looks a little crusty in there. There's a safety circuit in the oven control board which measures the current through the igniter and if it's too high or too low then the gas valve shuts off to avoid making your oven explode. Which is, you know, I guess a nice feature to have.
Anyway, these cost about $30 to get a generic one from the House of Bezos.
And yoinking out the old one starts with pulling the oven out, so that we can access the rear panel.
This connector here is what supplies the igniter with power, and it needs to be unplugged so that the burner assembly can be removed.
Like so.
Taking a peek through the grille, it's definitely looking a bit crusty.
So let's see, did I get the right replacement?
Well it sure looks the same.
Just, you know, newer.
But the important question is: does it work?
Sure looks like fire to me.
Anyway, I said that there were two problems with the oven, and the second problem is the oven door switch.
It's been flaky and intermittent for a while, so I ordered a new door switch for like $3 like maybe 2 years ago and just never got around to installing it, for reasons you're about to see. But ignoring this problem didn't seem to make it go away, so I guess it's time to actually do something about it.
And that starts with pulling the grills and burners off the cooktop.
And then pulling off the cooktop, which is quite easy to do when you remember to push in these little clips at the front, and don't forget and just yank it off by force.
Not that I would do anything like that.
Next up these screws down the side come out.
Including this obnoxious one in the back.
And then once those, and the ones down the back, are out, we can... remove more screws and panels.
And then we're finally at the switch.
After pulling off the connectors on the back you just need to press in the little metal tab on each side and it slides right out the front.
And then it's just out with the old and in with the new.
Except there's one slight problem.
This switch is the wrong polarity.
It's supposed to be normally-closed, but instead it's normally-open.
Now sometimes you can open up these switches and reconfigure them, but that ain't happening with this one.
So instead let's just crack open the old one and clean the contacts on it instead.
As they are looking a little bit crusty.
And a tad bit tired.
But after a little scrub with a brass brush...
They... kinda look the same?
It seems to be working, though, so we'll go with it.
Hmm, yup.
Yeah, that's more like it.
As for the new switch, the return window has long since expired so it's off to become microplastics floating in the ocean.
And in the meantime I'll be enjoying a working oven.
At least until the next time it breaks.
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