Fix microwave?

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EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,589
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Originally posted by: Slickone
Is anyone willing to provide any tips? I hate to throw this thing away without at least checking for something simple.

Built them 30+ years ago.

Then there was a fuse and a cap that usually failed when on the assembly line.

Simple job to replace them.

All power was disconnected, removed the cover and pull out the fuse and/or replace the cap.

I do not know if you can get caps at a reasonable pirce in single quantity.

I do not remember how we determined if it was the cap that failed; there was no sophisticated test equipment, just a set of procedures that the "troubleshooter" followed.

Swap out a couple of items; if that did not work; send the unit for an extensive tear down.

Units at that times were $500 with labor at $1.75/hr
 

Slickone

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 1999
6,120
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0
Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
Built them 30+ years ago.

Then there was a fuse and a cap that usually failed when on the assembly line.

Simple job to replace them.

All power was disconnected, removed the cover and pull out the fuse and/or replace the cap.

I do not know if you can get caps at a reasonable pirce in single quantity.

I do not remember how we determined if it was the cap that failed; there was no sophisticated test equipment, just a set of procedures that the "troubleshooter" followed.

Swap out a couple of items; if that did not work; send the unit for an extensive tear down.

Units at that times were $500 with labor at $1.75/hr
See anything in my pics that looked like the fuse or cap?
 

Colt45

Lifer
Apr 18, 2001
19,720
1
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the fuse is in the yellow thing, it opens in half

don't see the cap though
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,589
5
0
Originally posted by: Colt45
the fuse is in the yellow thing, it opens in half

don't see the cap though

Cap does not show in the pictures.

Memory thinks that it was about the size of a cig pack with an slight eliptical shape, but slightly taller. Usually mounted to the back wall with a couple of brackets

 

kb3edk

Senior member
Jul 11, 2004
494
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My microwave "broke" a few weeks ago when some food blew up and got stuck on the mica wave guide on the inside wall... it carbonized and created some sort of spark gap. Then that gap short-circuited and burned a hole in the wave guide and zapped a bunch more things, and the whole inside of the microwave lit up inside like a Christmas tree. It scared the hell out of me, I thought I was going to burn the house down.

Anyway I pulled the plug on the thing and cleaned out the charred mess inside, and it seems to work OK now, except for the charred hole in the side of the wave guide which is about 1/4" wide. :roll:

Here's a good (though slightly scary) amateur microwave repair guide I found on Google:

http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/micfaq.htm