Time for a New Stove?

My home came with a very nice duel fuel Thermador slide-in stove. I prefer cooking with gas and baking with electric so this worked very well for me. It has nice heavy duty grates and I've loved everything about it except that the display was very dim making it hard to set the oven temp. The light seemed to be getting dimmer and I resorted to counting up or down from 350 degrees which was the initial set temp when you turned on the oven. 

One day I came home from work to find that the display was completely gone and now you couldn't use the oven at all. Immediately I went onto the internet to see what I could find and came to realize that despite the great appliance that I had, one inherit issue was the display. Also came to realize that the display board was no longer available. I did however find out that you could possibly remove the display board and send it to one of several board repair companies. I then researched new appliances and realized that to replace my current unit would be over $5,000 and an alternative from another manufacturer would be at least $2,500.Decided that it made sense to attempt to remove the board and send it in.

One repair blog site response gave instructions for removing the board:

Cut off power, open oven door, the bottom of the glass frame should have a couple of screws to remove on each side, the glass frame should side down and come off, remove the knobs, the glass will tilt out from the bottom. BE CAREFUL WITH GLASS, YOU CAN"T GET ANOTHER ONE. This will give you access to control, ie clock. I have had good experience with having the control rebuilt.

Based on above instruction I proceeded to attempt to remove the board.  I followed the instructions as above and managed to get to the board. As I was uninstalling I also made a wiring diagram to help me re-install the board. Also note the metal foil below. You have to remove the foil from the clock face plate but leave attached to the front frame. It is sticky backed.

 

I was able to find several companies that do board repairs. One was in Canada which I figured would take longer for shipping. Another company was FixYourBoard in TX but they didn't have published pricing. I ended up going with CoreCentric Solutions in IL and their cost with shipping to repair was less than $200. I packaged and shipped the board and clock face plate to them on Friday via 2 Day USPS. They received the board on Monday and I had it back in my possession on Wednesday. Pretty quick turnaround time.

Now I had to try re-installing and see if it worked. Following my wiring diagram I managed to get the board attached. Before I proceeded with installing the rest of the stove front I turned on the breaker and viola - I now had a bright clock. I also tested some of the other functions and everything seemed to be in working order. So on to the final installation.

Getting the frame, glass front and glass frame back was no easy task. I couldn't really remember how I had gotten it apart and following the directions in reverse really didn't help. I struggled for about 30 minutes until finally I was able to get the frame to snap back into place. At one point I almost just left it sort of installed correctly but somehow persevered and got it in place. Never quite figured out what the clips below were for but by applying pressure I did get the frame properly in place. I also ended up with one extra screw. I tried to keep them laid out exactly as I had removed them but my cat, Molly kind of messed up that idea.

 



















Now for the big reveal! I was a little concerned that perhaps something came loose while trying to re-install but when I turned the power back on, all was still in working order.

While my board was away being fixed, I went to a local appliance store that carried Thermador so that if they weren't able to repair the board, I would have a back-up plan. Turns out Thermador no longer makes this semi-professional unit and the next closest unit would be well over $5,000. The next best option was a duel fuel unit from GE - their Cafe series. The available options were limited since the depth of my unit is 2" shorter than most and I have a strip of granite along the rear. If I purchased a deeper unit I would have to have the granite cut out. Determined that as much as I love my Thermador, I couldn't justify the additional price and since I get a discount on GE products through work, that unit made the most sense.  Thankfully, I didn't have to replace the unit and in less than a week, I'm back to cooking up a storm.