Cooking For Engineers

[sirpaul484]

Greetings. The oven in the place I currently live in has a fairly moderate problem. The door refuses to close all the way, leaving a 2 inch crack between the door and the oven wall, making the food not cook evenly. I tried everything I can think of to fix it, with no avail short of rotating the food every 10 minutes or so. Can anyone assist me?

[danemodsandy]

Hi:

First thing you should do is to check and see if the oven door is installed properly. Many ovens have a removable door, to make the oven cavity more accessible during cleaning. These doors usually come off by opening the oven door a few inches, then grasping the upper corners of the door while pulling upwards. There are hinges that stick out of the sides of the oven opening; you'll see them when the door is removed. These have to be sticking out at about a 45-degree angle to reinstall the door, and BOTH of them have to be in the same position. To reinstall, you line up the hinges with the hinge slots in the bottom of the oven door, then push the door downwards onto the hinges. The door should then close properly.

If this is not the problem (or if your door isn't removable), then you have either a bad hinge, or an oven door that is racked, meaning twisted. A bad hinge should be replaced. A racked door is usually caused when someone takes the door apart for some reason (like to replace broken door glass), and does not put it back together properly. Some patience and experimentation should help you determine what the problem is. If your door is racked and it is removable, then you should disassemble/reassemble it on a flat surface.

Put the screws that hold the inner and outer panels of the door back in this way: Begin by putting in the middle screw on the bottom edge of the door, tightening it only finger tight. Now put in the middle screw on the top edge of the door the same way. Now do the same thing on each side. Now check the door to see that it's laying flat. If it is, tighten the screws. If it's not, press it flat with your hands and then tighten the screws. Now put in the rest of the screws.

If none of this is the problem, you might possibly have a problem with the entire range being extremely off-level. Adjust the levelling legs you'll find on the bottom of the range at each front corner; they screw up to lower that corner, or down to raise it. If the levelling legs don't give enough adjustment, you may have to shim the bottom corners of the range with little pieces of metal or something. If you have a wall oven, it's possible that the oven is installed in such a way that the entire oven is racked. If that's the case, you will have a very interesting afternoon figuring out what needs to be done to correct the problem. All I can tell you here is to turn the breaker off, pull the oven out of the cavity (WITH A STRONG HELPER OR TWO), and then begin investigating.

Probably a levelling or simple reinstallation of a removable oven door that hasn't been put back on correctly will resolve the problem. Best of luck.

[sirpaul484]

I tried removing and re-inserting the oven door a few times, and that didn't help one bit, sadly.

As for the oven itself, yes, it is built into the wall.. fortunately, this place SHOULD be temporary, and as soon as I get a decently paying job, I should be able to move out somewhere nicer.. hopefully..

[danemodsandy]

Hi:

Sorry the removable oven door wasn't the problem. Sounds like a bad hinge, racked door, or racked oven body, all of which are your landlord's responsibility, if you have a landlord who gives a rat's derriere.

If you don't, sounds like your plan to move is a good one. An oven door that won't close is something of a fire hazard.

[sirpaul484]

yeah.. also, half-cooked pizza kind of tastes terrible unless you rotate it from time to time

my landlord (aka my mother) doesn't really care either way about the oven, and doesn't think it matters if it gets fixed or not.

[SgtNickFury]

I had a problem with our range recently, I called an appliance repair shop and found they charged minimum 60 bucks just to look at it, plus labor, parts etc......so I decided I would learn to fix stoves.....and fix it i did....and learned quite a bit about elctrical wiring, and multi-meters in the process......

Everything I needed in know for how to fix it I found at:

http://fixitnow.com/

It's also pretty entertaining.

Great site, If you want to post in forums however you do have to pay a nominal fee to join, but given the number of repairmen that post there (service people get admission for free) it's worth it, because chances are more then a few people have seen your stove and dealt with it before.....great site.

I didn't need to post hoever, the faq's, and info were more then enough for me to nail down the problem. The site admin also keeps a bunch of PDF's of repair manuals for all sorts of models of appliances.