Very helpful, keep the videos coming:) In addition to the obvious continuity test, an additional test your viewers may also find useful is testing for an element shorted to ground. To do this, set the multimeter to the highest ohm's range or use an auto ranging meter, and place one probe to the outer shell of the element, and touch the other probe to each terminal one at a time. The meter should read an open circuit. If there is any resistance reading, this means the element has deteriorated to the point of allowing the inner nichrome wire to touch the outer shell. Normally when this happens the element will stop responding to the thermostat cycling it off, and it will burn like a sparkler from the point of failure towards the terminal with the unswitched 120V, because with most ranges and wall ovens the control only switches one leg of the 240V circuit, making for a nice 4th of July show in your kitchen, and the only way to stop this is to unplug the range from the receptacle or shut off the power at the breaker box. This short to ground test can also be performed on a coil cooktop element, a water heater element, basically any Calrod style element.
When reordering a heating element, how do you measure the depth of the element. Do you measure from the metal plate out toward the front, or do you measure from the point where the element connects to the wiring? Thanks!
Hmmm. I have replaced about half a dozen heating elements, and I have never worried about the length of the heating element. The only thing that I have made sure to do is to get the correct wattage. If you have a normal sized water heater, I would not think you need to worry about the length of the heating element. All water heater heating elements that I have used are about 14 inches long. If you buy one a little longer or a little shorter, it really should not matter as long as the wattage is correct.
Ok. Question for you: oven wasn't getting to temperature, but was still getting hot. Replaced the heating element and the new element wouldn't even get hot. Took it back out, and put the old one back in, and it would get warm. Ordered a 3rd element, replaced it and it wouldn't get warm. Very very small chance of ordering 2 BAD elements. What the heck is going on?
In my experience experience, if a heating helmet goes bad, it will not get hot at all. In your case, I wouldn’t think that the heating element was the problem. Did your original heating element get bright red? Did you by chance check the resistance across the element? How hot did your oven get with your original heating element? You are right that it would be very odd to receive two bad heating elements.
