Advice wanted - old electric stove/oven - parts no longer available

[Astatine]

Our oven element in our Simpson electric stove/oven burned out last week. I don't know how old the stove/oven is but I'm guessing at least 20 years old. Any manual that came with the stove is long gone (we bought this house about 4 years ago).

One stove element (out of 4) has never worked in that time, and another one is very wonky but works ok. The other two elements are fine.

We live in a place that has very limited options for whitegoods repairers. We've got the one option coming next week to replace the oven element with, I quote, not the exact spare part but one that they can adapt to fit our oven, and they reckon there are no spare parts for the two stove elements.

At what point do we decide that this stove/oven is too old to maintain (ie spare parts no longer available) and buy a new one?


We do have natural gas connected to the house now, so we could in theory upgrade to gas. Or replace with another electric one. We likely have bonded asbestos in the kitchen walls and have no intention of doing a full renovation in the kitchen, so options are a bit limited.

Edit to add: have done some online searching for spare parts, but have had no luck in finding either stove or oven elements that I am confident would be compatible.

[geekette]

Have you looked online?  Here in the US, we got some replacement parts for a very old stove (installed in '58!) off ebay. 

I see Simpson parts listed here.  With the model number, you can sometimes find the manual online, too.

[Astatine]

Thanks for the response. Yeah, I did look online and came up with very little. I should have written that in my post.

I usually have pretty good google-fu skills so me not finding anything means if it is available, it's buried pretty deep or labelled as something else. Ebay has nothing relevant in Australia (well, did a quick search on key words. Never used Ebay so I don't know the quirks of its search engine). I've done a bunch of searches on Simpson oven elements and none of them are even remotely the same shape as the one in ours. I don't know enough about ovens to know what was a compatible brand/model 20 odd years ago to look elsewhere.

Stove elements look a little more promising, as in I can at least find Simpson branded elements that at least look vaguely similar to ours. But again, have no idea if any of them are compatible with our stove.

I suspect I'm talking myself into going ahead with the bodgy oven repair next week, which will hopefully keep us going long enough while I do some deep research on what to replace it with (gas vs electric etc). Going without an oven long term isn't an option, and a temporary one sitting on the bench won't work in terms of bench space and available power outlets.

[Cassie]

WE had this same problem when stove was 17 yo.  The part needed was 180 but a new stove 500.   WE sold the old stove to a parts dealer for $50 & bought a new one. 

[Rural]

Check any mom and pop-type hardware stores in your area. Look on the shelf, but also talk to the owner or cashier. They very often have old stock, sometimes out, sometimes not ,and the owners and workers are great sources of information about who may have it if they don't. Oven elements are dead easy to replace (just unplug first!)