Expert Tips for DIY Oven & Cooker Repair

Kevin and Tony – the Ransom Spares appliance repair experts

Is your oven smoking? Or perhaps it’s not heating up properly? Whatever the problem, a broken oven is a massive pain, leaving you reliant on unappealing, overly salty, microwavable ready meals.

Luckily for you, Kevin and Tony, the Ransom Spares appliance repair experts are back. Their mission in this life is to rid the world of pesky appliance problems, as well as inventing an oven time machine and possibly running jointly for prime minster (OK, so not all of that was true).

What they can do is provide you with expert advice for DIY oven and cooker repair. Feast your eyes on their seven top tips.

If your oven isn’t heating up properly or you can feel hot air escaping, you may need to replace your oven door seal. Over time, the seal on your oven will start to sag and perish, making the oven less efficient and scorching the oven’s knobs, if they are directly above the door. Replacing the oven seal is an easy fix that you can carry out yourself – watch our video for a step-by-step guide.

Is your oven door not closing properly? Or is heat escaping from your cooker? As with the oven seal, over time the hinges can become worn out and damaged, causing heat to escape and the oven to become less efficient. To fix the problem, watch our step-by-step video guide to replacing your oven’s hinges.

This tip sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many problems dirt can cause:

• Firstly, excess smoke from old, burnt-on food and fat will ruin your culinary delights, make your kitchen smell and set the smoke alarm off every time you open the door
• Secondly, a build-up of dirt on the oven door can cause hot spots, ultimately leading to the glass breaking. If it’s already too late for your oven’s glass, our step-by-step video will show you how to easily replace it
• Lastly, if your oven is fan assisted, the bearings may become clogged up over time, reducing the fan’s efficiency and preventing your food from cooking properly. If it’s too late and your fan is already damaged, watch our video on how to replace the fan motor in an electric oven. 

Keeping your oven clean with our oven cleaner can prevent all of the above problems from occurring.

If the light goes out in your oven, it’s harder to see how cooked your food is, resulting in you opening the door more regularly, letting out heat and reducing your oven’s efficiency. Luckily, there’s no need to bake in the dark – replacing the bulb in your oven lamp is easy with our step-by-step video.

If your oven is being excessively noisy, there’s likely to be a problem with the fan motors. There are usually two of these – the cooling fan motor and the oven fan motor – and sometimes the bearings can wear out, causing a loud rattling sound when the oven is on. To fix the problem, watch our step-by-step videos on how to replace the fan motor and how to replace the cooling fan motor.

Over time, the markings on your oven’s knobs can wear away, making them illegible. It’s tempting to leave them like this – but don’t. It will result in you guessing the oven’s temperature settings, which won’t have a good impact on your Master Chef aspirations! You can simply replace them by watching this step-by-step video.

One of the most common faults with an electric oven is it not heating up properly, and the most common cause is usually a faulty oven element. The oven element is incredibly easy to fit, so with a little guidance, you can quickly carry out the repair yourself. Watch our video on replacing an element to find out more.