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lavendargrrl

Jenn Air S125 Downdraft Electric Range - Broken

lavendargrrl
12 years ago

Hello, I would appreciate any advice. We have a very old electric Jenn Air range with the downdraft between the burners. In the past 6 months one of the prongs that holds on the knobs for the burners broke, and we're down to 3 working burners. We ordered a replacement part for that recently, and just need to figure out how to get the part switched out. However, this past week our oven has gone nuts. Regardless of what temperature we set it, the preheat light never goes off and the oven gets very hot. As an example, I was trying to cook some sweet potato fries and the directions were to cook for 30 minutes at 400. I set the temp at 375 instead and set the timer for 15 minutes to check them and flip if needed. In less than 12 minutes they were totally burned and ruined. We first thought okay, it's time to get a new range. However, we quickly have discovered that trying to replace this unit is not as simple as we had hoped. It seems that nobody makes downdraft electric drop-in units at all anymore. I think we could get a slide-in or freestanding unit perhaps, but then the whole downdraft thing is causing us difficulty. It does not appear that the kind of downdraft we have (I believe it may be called integrated downdraft) is made anymore either. When I search online, I do find some options like something called 'telescoping downdraft', and that is quite expensive (sold separately for around $700) and I have no idea if that will even work with our setup or not. I suppose getting a repair done could be our best option, though I hesitate to continue dumping money into this seriously old appliance! A neighbor told me she believes the unit was original to the house, and it was built in 1979! Online searches lead me to think the problem could be a faulty temperature probe. Does anyone know if that sounds plausible, and if so, would you recommend a repair or just biting the bullet and getting a new appliance, which seems that it will end up being quite expensive. Thanks for any advice! We are confused and frustrated...

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