Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

[jkust]

So we replace all of our appliances in early 2008 including our $450 over the range microwave oven. It is a Frigidaire Professional Series. We are a family of 4 and are light on our appliances. So yesterday my wife said that the microwave made a loud bang and now when you turn it on, it makes a loud buzzing and does not heat anything up any longer. So the trouble shooters on the internet say it is one of three things. a Diode, the High voltage capacitor or the Magnetron. The Diode is about $20 and the other two are @100 each. I hate to replace a high end mocrowave and spend what now is $500 if I can fix it myself. I will not call a repair person in. Trouble is apparently other than the diode, the other two items being high voltage related scare me. Of course I have no clue which of the three are bad and how to test them. Has anybody ever fixed a similar issue?

 

[jigngrub]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

So we replace all of our appliances in early 2008 including our $450 over the range microwave oven. It is a Frigidaire Professional Series. We are a family of 4 and are light on our appliances. So yesterday my wife said that the microwave made a loud bang and now when you turn it on, it makes a loud buzzing and does not heat anything up any longer. So the trouble shooters on the internet say it is one of three things. a Diode, the High voltage capacitor or the Magnetron. The Diode is about $20 and the other two are @100 each. I hate to replace a high end mocrowave and spend what now is $500 if I can fix it myself. I will not call a repair person in. Trouble is apparently other than the diode, the other two items being high voltage related scare me. Of course I have no clue which of the three are bad and how to test them. Has anybody ever fixed a similar issue?

My youngest brother is an electronics tech and used to repair these part time. He said one of the worst shocks he ever got was when discharging a microwave capacitor... take it to a repair shop, it shouldn't cost that much and you get to stay alive.

 

[Fishing Dude too]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

I would replace, just me. Lowes sells reasonable models. Brother-in-law spent almost the cost of replacement having his repaired (was high end model). Have a $100 model from lowe's 3 years old works like a champ. If you do repair yourself discharge the caps to ground. Oh sounds like the magnatron had one with one going bad growing up. You may have just a bad fuse though.

 

[jkust]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

Well, I ended up finding a really good video on youtube. The good news is that the modern capacitors have a slow drain that self discharges and I know how to discharge it myself now. The bummer here is that the Oven and Micro are both the Professional series and are a matching set. The bad news is even if it is the magnetron it has to be ordered in.
Not sure how I will proceed quite yet. I hate to get to the point where you are throwing parts at an appliance and you are halfway to a new one by the time you fix it.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

you can check the diode and capacitor with a multi-meter. make sure its discharged before hand. however when diodes pop, they look like they have been blown up . usually the case is deformed.

it wont hurt anything to pull the cover and look.

 

[jkust]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

you can check the diode and capacitor with a multi-meter. make sure its discharged before hand. however when diodes pop, they look like they have been blown up . usually the case is deformed.

it wont hurt anything to pull the cover and look.

Thanks. Think I'll be removing it from the wall and trying just that. Throwing such a nice unit out and spending for an equivalent $500 unit is something I just can't get past.

 

[dingbat]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

Unless you find the root cause of the failure, plan on replacing all three parts with you want any chance of fixing the first time.

A magnetron almost always takes out the diodes with it. They should be replaced in tandem.

There is no down and dirty way to test the integrity of a capacitor in the circuit. To make any type of meaningful test you’ll have to remove it from the circuit. You might as well replace it at that point.

 

[jkust]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

Unless you find the root cause of the failure, plan on replacing all three parts with you want any chance of fixing the first time.

A magnetron almost always takes out the diodes with it. They should be replaced in tandem.

There is no down and dirty way to test the integrity of a capacitor in the circuit. To make any type of meaningful test you?ll have to remove it from the circuit. You might as well replace it at that point.

Well, I disassembeled the microwave and I see my multimeter doesn't have the ability to test capacitance. I tested the Diode with the ohm meter and it seems the diode is dead. Without the capacitance test capability I can't seem to test the capacitor. Beyond that then the parts would all need to be ordered and all three of them are a total of $250 or half the cost of a new replacement.
Interestingly then last night I went to some big box stores to shop for one and amazingly they don't actually carry any of what they display. Only the two cheapest units do they keep in stock. Basically then you go in, pay retail and they put the order in to have it shipped to your house next week some time. Now I ask isn't the whole reason for paying retail pricing so you can take it home with you. I will have to try appliance specialty stores in order to have it in this weekend.

 

[jkust]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

Thanks for all the replies guys. Given we need the microwave daily, the expensive repair parts and order time and that I had time today, I went and bought one and installed it this afternoon. I got the big 2.1 cubic foot version that required exact installation to meet the tile below correctly. No room for error so I went slow. The overall size is a good bit bigger than our previous one. It really is a shame that it is normal to throw away a nearly new appliance.

 

[NYBo]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

When I had a magnetron go, it was very obvious- it looked burned at the business end.

 

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

I repair commercial micro waves. One item that you did not mention is the triac. The triac is what switches the low voltage from the control circuit to the high voltage circuit. These will usually go boom/pop when they go bad. When they do, sometimes the high voltage circuit will backfeed into the control circuit frying the main circuit board/timer board. This is probably what happened to your unit.

When checking microwave diodes, you must increase the voltage through the diode. The 9 vdc supplied by a typical meter is not enough. I use 2 18vdc batteries or 3 12vdc batteries in series to test the diodes. And I DO agree it is very dangerous to work on these units if you are not trained. One tech that worked for our company got jolted real bad. He passed away 18 hours later.

Replacement was a wise decesion on your part.

 

[jkust]

Re: Anybody ever repaired their microwave oven?

Thanks for that. I kept the old unit stored away to the chagrin of my wife if I ever need any replacement parts which I realize is a bit optamistic. Of coure I never quite figured out exactly what was wrong and which parts are bad. The new unit in just 4 years is much nicer than the old one with led lighting, 400 cfm fan compared to 300, enamel interior, and some other nicer bits but still was exactly $500..the price of the replaced one 4 years ago.