5651XUB Magic Chef Range - Instructions

The repair itself is really quite easy. Cut the wires, strip the ends and attach the new receptacle with wire nuts. The hard part was getting to it. My cooktop is about 30 years old, so I had to wade through piles of nasty built up grease. Some of the sheet metal screws were unworkable, so I had to cut them off with a Dremel tool. Not a pretty picture, but that's how repair work is on old stuff.

Our Maytag Gemini is about 10 years old. One night the 8" front right element was smoking and had a white hot spot on the burner. I quickly turned it off and after the element cooled I removed it. Since one 8" element was burned out, but the rest of the range and oven worked, I assumed I could get it fixed. Rather than call the service man for $99 for a diagnostic visit, I decided to go to PartSelect and get prices on parts. They had the easiest site to use with part numbers, exploded part drawings, etc. Since I had to replace one burned out element anyway, I ordered the burner and the wiring receptacle. I assumed that was step one. The parts came in about two days. It took me about 20 minutes to put them in with no problems. Very easy. However, the burmer still would not work. I went back to the site and determined the only other part it could be was the infinite switch. The bad element little light on the top control panel was not going out even after I put in new parts. I figured it was shorted out and frozen in the closed position, so I ordered a new one from PrtSelect. It came again in about two days. This part was easy to replace, except it took longer because the entire back of the oven had to be removed. Three pieces of sheet metal had to be removed and two plastic end caps. Sheet metal has sharp edges. Watch out that you do not get cut. A lot of screws got removed and put back. You have to be careful that the three pieces of sheet metal are put back correctly because several edge tabs lap over each other. The infinite switch fixed the problem. Took me about two hours to do the switch replacement, but that counted cleaning the sides of the oven and underneath the oven (Yuch!). Now everything works fine. I suspect that the old wiring receptacle was fine and just the infinite switch and element needed to be replaced. In any case, the wiring receptacle was cheap. In the end, the repair cost me the same $99, but I spent it in parts and not parts plus installation so I was way ahead.