KEMS377GBL1 KitchenAid Microwave Oven Combo - Instructions

Replaced hinges since weak springs were allowing the door to open as the oven heated which would turn on the oven light and give a warning on the control panel. To remove door you need to open the dorr all the way and place a short pin through a hole in the hinge under the hinge point. The pin needs to be short enough that you can get it to pass through the door surround. I cut a short pair of pins from a 16D nail. Place the short pins in the respective hinges and then close the door. Grip the oven door handle and the bottom of the door and lift it free of the oven. Lay the door face down on a towel or blanket. remove three phillips screws from the top of the door and two from the brackets on the bottom of the door. Also can remove the two phillips screws on the door that hold each hinge in place. Seperate the door from the glass and lift out the old hinges. Install the new hinges and reassemble the door. ILift the door back into place. Make sure you install it tight/close to the oven front. Open the door, noting any interference and if it opens freely then open completely and remove the factory installed pins from the hinge and you should be done!

PartSelect service was quick and good and the price was about 35% of having the appliance store replace the hinges. We have two wall ovens - one a Whirlpool and the other a Kitchen-Aid - and strangely enough both use the same hinges. The oven door hinges are the weakest part of the ovens and we have had to have them replaced before. After paying over a $175 each for the repairs I was shocked to see how quickly they failed. Within 8 months one had to be propped closed with a broom handle and the other with a stool just to keep the doors closed so my wife could use the ovens .. and keep the oven light from staying on all the time.
My wife was ready to call the service people again when I said let me see if I can replace the hinges. I looked at the YouTube videos on oven door hinge replacement and it looked easy enough. I found PartSelect had the replacement hinges so I decided to start with one oven to see if I could do the replacement. It took almost three hours to get the oven door off and the hinges changed. Why? Every demo video on YouTube showed opening the door all the way and flipping over a lock that stopped the door closing at that almost closed point. This allows you lift up on the oven door releasing the hinge arm from the catch so you could slide the oven door away from the body of the oven. Guess what! These hinges didn’t have that little flip over lock!
I finally managed to get the door off using a screw driver to help me disengage one of the hinges from the oven itself. The rest of the hinge replacement went exactly like the demo videos described. Now I had to get the door back on the oven.
I held the door as shown on the videos and it slipped right in, but when I tried to close the door the whole thing was too high and bound. Messing with it I finally heard something drop out and onto the floor. I picked up this little apx. 1/8th inch diameters by ¼ inch long pin with a flared crimp on one end. I looked carefully at both hinges with a flashlight and saw that there was a pin like that on one side and not on the other. I slipped the second pin out of the remaining side and suddenly the door closed perfectly. It was then that I realized that the pins acted like the flip over lock! The problem was the new hinges had the pin and the old one did not, and you should not remove the pin from the new ones before you put the door back as it holds the hinge in a tension needed need to fit the door back on (and that tension is strong).
So there is a trick. You will need something to function as those pins, like a 16p finish nail, when you remove the oven door.
I immediately ordered hinges from PartSelect for the second oven .. saving the pins from the first hinge replacement. The second set of hinges arrived two days later and I opened the second oven door and put in the two saved pins – the door lifted off perfectly and 15 minutes later it was back on with new hinges. By the way, I saved the now four little pins in a zip-lock bag and put them with our file of appliance manuals. If I have to replace the hinges again I will have the pins I will need for removing the door.
One other thing I learned was why I believe the original hinges worked for several years while the ones installed by the service guy failed in months! On each of the ovens the service guy had replaced only one of the hinges. You could see the grime on the 4 or 5 year old ones that wasn’t there on the months old ones. I wish I could show you the pictures I took of both hinges (which this site won’t let me add), but the two hinges placed side by side had slightly different length and shaped locking arms (that part that slides into the body of the oven). On that first door I struggled with I couldn’t understand why one side just slid out while the other I had to force out. Looking back it was the old hinge that slid out and I don’t believe it was ever engaged as the locking arm was slightly shorter and a different sha

After reading other repair reports and talking to a representative, I ordered the thermal overload safety thermostat. Relatively easy to install after removing the oven from the cabinet, only it did not work. After going over the wiring with a voltage meter, we discovered there was no power to the upper oven, only the lower oven was working. Took the panel off the top of the oven and found a wire which was not attached to anything. Never needed this part at all. This oven was purchased from a second-hand store and was used in a remodeling. $52 for part and $100 for serviceman to make the oven operational.

I found several posts about Whirlpool/KitchenAid ovens having this problem and most of the time this required a replacement of the thermal fuse. Other than the large number of screws to remove the oven and the sheet metal coverings, replacing the fuse was mostly about waiting to get the part. If I had a local dealer with the fuse, I probably could have been baking Deep Dark Chocolate Cheesecake that same evening. Even so, this particular repair should be left to those familiar with doing moderate-level handyman type repairs. You have to make sure the breaker is off and beware of the sharp edges on sheet metal. Fortunately, the fuse was easy to find using online documentation for my model. Part Select was very helpful when my original order did not arrive. Their customer service was great!

When the oven is installed, there are two pins on the replacement hinges that are removed. If you were like me, you tossed these pins so you need to take a large nail and cut a 3/8" of material to replace these pins. This will allow the door to be removed when you open it half way. This is the most difficult part of the repair since you need to carefully pull the door off and a precise angle with an upward pull from the bottom. You will notice the new hinges have these pins so you can also try to get some new pins at a hardwire store that are similar. Next, you need to careful set the oven door down on a smooth work area and remove all of the philip head screws. The front of the door will be remove from the inside door piece by slipping it up a little when the screws are removed. The two screws that are on the inside panel hold the hinges. Take note of how you remove these since you will do just the reverse in putting in the new hinges. It would be a good idea to take the glass section off and clean it if you want to take on the extra challenge but you need to be very careful not to break these and that you put them back that same way it was removed. Now that you have it all put back together, you simply install the door back the way it was removed and then you can open it all of the way down to remove the pins in the hinges. Now would be a good time to put these pins in a save place with the rest of your paperwork for any further removal.

Turned the circuit breaker off, removed trim and the oven screws, pulled oven out, and placed on a stand in front. Electrical cord was just long enough without disconnecting. Removed the back panel, installed the old thermostat with the new one the same way. Used the same phillips screwdriver for the operation. Installed the oven using reverse order. Turn circuit breaker on, back in business. Prior comments definitely helped me a lot. Thanks.

This site helped me diagnois the problem rating the suggested problem as a 99% chance cause of the problem. Ordered the thermal overload safety thermostat and it arrived in just two days. Repair was quick and easy once getting the oven removed from the cabinet. (It's very heavy so have some assistance or a sturdy stand to set it out on.)#2 Phillips scredriver and needle nose pliers were only tools needed. Overall, an easy repair for anyone.

There are hinges on the door that need to be lifted up to take the entire oven door off the appliance. The screws are taken off of the door to get to the interior glass. The cracked oven door was simply taken off and replaced by the new one and the screws were put back and the door was placed by hooking it onto the appliance and the hinges were dropped down. Simple as that!

parts arrived in 3 days along with easy to follow instructions. could not have been easier...made kitchen aid look like a class of clowns...

Took off the covers and replaced the little bulbs. Took a long time to figure out how to get the covers off. Bulbs were $26 apiece!

First, I'll say this website made it easy to find and order the part, it arrived quickly and reading others' reviews helped with installation. My Dad and I did the repair together, which really helped - my Dad is an fantastic handyman! We removed the door by lifting it up out of the hinges - a little difficult to get the right angle, but we succeeded with a little wiggling. We disassembled each later of glass/door, keeping each layer in order with screws so we could retrace our steps. I cleaned each layer thoroughly, which added to the time. Unfortunately, just as we were putting the last part on (exterior door with glass), the glass shattered as I tightened the screw! Ack! My Dad said it's because the glass was old and easy to shatter. Maybe I tightened the screw too much? So, back to the website I go to order the next part. We expect it to arrive soon. The bad news: another Christmas without an oven. The good news: my oven is now clean as new (I even removed the back fan cover to clean the fan - couldn't have done that without removing the door) and the parts added up to a fraction of the cost of a new oven.

Removed trim strip from each side of oven, removed one screw from each side hat held oven in place and slid oven out of wall. Finally found the thermostat located on the back side of the oven after removing the sheet metal on back. replaced the thermostat and reversed the procedure. Only difficult part was locating the thermostat. I thought it was on top, when in fact it was on the back. Pretty easy, really, and saved some cash in the process.

The only difficult part of this repair was figuring out how to get the oven door off. Most instructions advise you to flip the hinge locking clips, then lift off the door. But this oven does not have hinge locking clips. What it has is holes in the hinges, just behind the hinge pins. To get the door off, you need to open the door and insert some 3/16' pins in those holes, then close the door and lift it off. I almost got this right the first time, but I used 1/8" pins, and they didn't work, too small. It took me a long time to figure out to use bigger pins. Once the door is off, it's just a few Philips screws to work your way down to the glass. There are 4 layers of glass in this door.

Removing the door was the first challenge but once the door was off it was a matter of disassembling the door to get access to the interior door. If you remove all pieces and line them up in the order that they are removed you have a good chance for success.

Like others said, the trick was getting the oven door off. If you don't have the instructions, here's how: Open the door all the way. Shine a flashlight on the hinge, and you will see an open hole about 3/16" diameter below the hingepin and toward the oven. With the door open, put a 5/32" allen wrench or any other comparably-sized metal pin into the hole in each hinge. With the pins in place, close the door as far as it will go, which is almost but not quite fully closed. Put one hand under the door handle, the other hand under the bottom of the door, and pull the bottom of the door down and out. With maybe a little wiggling, it will come right out. That's really all there is to it! Taking out all the glass layers is straightforward; you don't need any instructions to see how to do it.