Maytag Gemini broiler element meltdown

[mike1270]

My wife was heating taco shells in the upper oven of our Gemini double-oven. A few minutes into the task, smoke started pouring out of the oven. When she opened it, the shells were on fire and half of the broiler element was still glowing orange even though the oven was done preheating. She hit the cancel button to turn the oven off, but the element kept glowing. I flipped the breaker to shut it down and started troubleshooting. The oven temp sensor should read about 1100 ohms at room temp. It was reading a little high, but it was still kind of hot. When I looked at the heating element, it looked like it was damaged where it rests on a support bracket. I ordered a new heating element and a new control board ($300…ouch!) and hoped for the best. I received the two parts within two days! Awesome! I put the new broiler element in and it fixed the problem without having to change the control board. After I thought about it for a few minutes, I figured out that, when the outside ceramic covering broke off of the heating element where it was resting on the support bracket, the internal resistive element grounded chassis completing the circuit through half of the element. This turned it on. Glad we were home at the time to shut it down.