Do I have to replace my entire oven because I cannot find a replacement part that is no longer manufactured?

February 8, 2012 9:02 PM

Do I have to replace my entire oven because I cannot find a replacement part that is no longer manufactured?

I have an old (ca. early 1990s) Amana oven, model number ARDS800E. Recently, the oven's control board/timer (part #Y0308480) went out, rendering the oven completely unusable. Google searching gives endless websites that list the necessary part as no longer manufactured/no longer available. One of the sites looked promising, so I placed an order for it, which came back today as cancelled because it is no longer made.

Am I completely up a creek in "old oven hell" here? The oven is a downdraft type, and the way my house is configured, I can only replace it with another downdraft oven (due to the kitchen construction, venting capabilities, etc.). The cost of a new downdraft oven begins around $2000 and goes *way* up from there (upwards of $5000-$6000). Ouch! Here I was really hoping to save money this year...

If anyone has any brilliant insights as to what I can do without having to spend thousands of dollars, I would love to hear them. Complicating the matter is the fact that we are putting up the house for sale later this year, so leaving a gaping hole in the kitchen floor isn't really an option. Any and all ideas will be graciously and seriously considered. Many kind thanks in advance to you all-

posted by chatelaine to home & garden (13 answers total)

How much did your oven cost new? You might be able to buy a control board off of someone who is more interested in replacing theirs than you are.

There aren't any current listings on Craigslist for ARDS800E's for sale, but a Google search turns up a phone number in St. Louis. You might try giving them a call. Ordinarily shipping would be prohibitive, but all you want is the control board.
posted by jedicus at 9:15 PM on February 8, 2012

This is a vintage oven shop in Burbank, CA. Many of the ovens they stock are ultra-cool, beautiful things, but I drive by there all the time and I also notice "regular' old ovens, meaning perhaps something like you're looking for. I have no idea if they sell parts, but maybe you can give it a shot.
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:23 PM on February 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

You could try calling appliance repairmen in your area to see if they have any old stock. An electronic tech could be able to fix the board if they have the proper schematic but may be hard to find one. fixyourboard.com claims to be able to repair them for about $160. I have never heard of them before, but there are probably similar outfits.
posted by Yorrick at 9:24 PM on February 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

You could try calling appliance repairmen in your area to see if they have any old stock.

Try this. A friend of mine smashed his no-longer-made stove's glass top in with a pot and ended up finding somebody in the area who had a replacement before too long at all, and I imagine that's gotta be tougher to find than a control board.
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 9:40 PM on February 8, 2012

Here's a place that apparently has it in stock; forgive me if this is the site where your order was cancelled.
posted by thejoshu at 9:53 PM on February 8, 2012

You say you need the downdraft oven because you don't have space or ability to have a range hood over the oven, right? I grew up with a kitchen that had a regular oven against one (interior) wall and a simple through-the-wall exhaust fan installed through an adjacent (exterior) wall, maybe 6 to 10 feet from the oven. As far as I know there were no problems from this. Would that be an option for you?
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:57 PM on February 8, 2012

There is an entire economy concerned with refurbishing and reselling older, used appliances, with their own supply chain, sources, etc. You might cruse such shops and see if they can locate the board (probably by scavenging another unit). Worst case, you might find a replacement downdraft oven for a fraction of new cost.
posted by kjs3 at 10:33 PM on February 8, 2012

Awesome ideas! Keep 'em coming...

We had the Amana (now technically Whirlpool) repair people out already... but since they're a big corporate entity, they may not have access to the cool old parts like some local outfits do, so I'll try that route.

@thejoshu - That's a new site to me- thank you. I didn't see anything with that link, though.

@cowbell - That's right. The oven is currently situated in a kitchen "island".

Here are some photos of my kitchen to give an idea of what I have:

The window on the back wall here does go to the outside:
http://i953.photobucket.com/albums/ae19/hmslagomorph/IMG_9732.jpg

The oven and its relative space to that back wall:
http://i953.photobucket.com/albums/ae19/hmslagomorph/IMG_9731.jpg

Looking at the kitchen island from just outside the kitchen:
http://i953.photobucket.com/albums/ae19/hmslagomorph/IMG_9730.jpg
posted by chatelaine at 11:55 PM on February 8, 2012

I had a similar problem. I googled the oven's part number and found the standard name for the part I needed, then googled the oven + part name and found a part number and a few people who stocked the part or something similar. The part was cheap, shipping was another matter. Even so, I managed the repair. The part, BTW, was made by (or for) Whirlpool.

(But, bad P.S., the part gave out again pretty quick and it seemed I had some kind of wiring bug that was going to continue screwing me over so I finally ditched the thing after finding someone who wanted to sell me a used replacement. That is your other option. Amazing number of people who think a new oven is an upgrade. I used local buy/sell papers instead of Craigslist, but whatever...)
posted by CCBC at 1:04 AM on February 9, 2012

Bad news:
When our electric control panel for our otherwise gas heated oven went out due to a lightning strike, our appliance repair guy said that most manufacturers were making these electric control panel gas ovens intentionally because the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) for the electric control panels was relatively short (compared to non-electric ones) which forced either expensive panel replacements or even more expensive whole appliance replacements. So what's getting you is likely an intentional design failure.

Good news:
What others are saying - that you can probably jury-rig a similar replacement if you're adventurous in an electronics sort of way, or you can replace with used.
posted by kalessin at 5:06 AM on February 9, 2012

It's fairly likely that it has one or more dead capacitors, which would be a fairly easy fix. If you feel like investing $50-100, you could find someone on Craigslist who knows what they're doing who could replace all the capacitors in the board. Shouldn't take too much effort or time, and it would likely solve the problem. My mother's microwave died a few months ago, and it turned out to be capacitors in the power supply.


This will tell you a little about it:
http://www.google.com/search?q=capacitors+die+over+time

I mean, it could be something else, but my guess would be the caps.
posted by Slinga at 4:54 PM on February 9, 2012

Where are you? Look on yelp and google, and find a few local appliance repair shops. Explain the situation and they'll probably have some leads. The 1990s isn't *that* old for an oven!
posted by barnone at 3:50 PM on February 10, 2012

This place, "Appliance Timers" looks pretty legit - the website says: "We have over 40 years experience in troubleshooting, testing, repairing and rebuilding most faulty Amana range controllers and timers. We also sell rebuilt Amana range timers from our stock."
posted by barnone at 3:54 PM on February 10, 2012