Coppertone 1966 General Electric P7

[maranoman]

This week I picked up this coppertone 1966 GE P7 (model J348B2) which was headed to the scrapyard. I brought it to our shop at work and did some initial testing.

First I tested the oven using a thermocouple and found the highs and lows averaged out to 349 degrees when set to 350. You can't get much closer than that. The broiler element also passed testing. I ran it through a 2-hour cleaning cycle and it peaked out at 867 degrees, which was close enough to the recommended 880 degrees for me. Once completed, the oven cavity looked nearly brand new. Had no problems getting the latch solenoid to release when called upon to do so.

The clock motor was a bit loud but running. The minute hand moved slowly, but it did not keep good time (advancing only a couple minutes every hour.) I will need to look into that further.

Finally I tested the burners. All but the front left sensi-temp burner seemed to work just fine. The sensi-temp burner would not heat up unless I had it set to Grill and I turned on the left rear burner. (By the way, the griddle was found stored away in the bottom drawer!)

I went through the sensi-temp troubleshooting section of the service manual. I removed the sensor wires from the responder and could not get continuity between them. I checked the yellow wires from the sensor back to the control panel and found the wires intact. While I was behind the control panel, I checked the sensi-temp burner transformer and had 120 VAC on the primary side and 12 VAC on the secondary side. My conclusion is that the sensor will need to be replaced.

I wondered if any club members had a reasonably priced sensor unit they would be willing to sell me. The original part number is WB21X154 which subs to WB21X5207. There are a few WB21X5207 units on eBay but they are out of my price range.

I would also appreciate any advice on what to look for on repairing the clock myself, if that is a possibility.

This P7 will join my two recently added 1957 GE ranges. I never thought that I'd branch out from collecting washers, dryers and dishwashers, but here I am...

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[maranoman]

Here are my 57's

Here are some pics of my 1957 GE's. The Liberator requires a complete restoration due to mice infestation. All the insulation was replaced. The sensi-temp burner's cap tube was broken off at the burner, so I replaced it's switch with a standard burner switch and did some rewiring to eliminate the griddle circuit.

The other '57 is a Speedster model purchased from the original owners who were in their mid-nineties and moving to assisted living. It was used as an overflow basement stove for holidays since 1971. I only had some minor cleaning to do.

 

[luxflairguy]

All 3 are delicious! Congrats! Greg

 

[qsd-dan]

Nice save on the '66, can't believe someone would throw that away. Whatever they replaced it with won't last 10 years.

 

The other range goodies look fantastic as well!

 

[repairguy]

Congrats on saving another vintage appliance. I’m sure it was tosssd simply due to it’s color and age but it looks great and I’m sure will give you many years of trouble free service.

 

[pulltostart]

They are all beautiful.  Congratulations!

 

lawrence

 

[goatfarmer]

Nice save!!

 

[combo52]

Wonderful 1966GEP7 range

These early self cleaning oven‘s were wonderful. We used to joke that we use them to calibrate our thermometers that we used to test ovens because they were so accurate in oven temperature.

The other wonderful thing is these ovens were so highly insulated and with no dirty wasteful window heat loss was very low. It would be interesting to do some testing but I would gamble at this 1966 oven probably uses half the electricity per hour to stay at 3:50 compared to even the small of it on your older ranges.

You were likely correct with the sensor as what’s needed for your sense a temp I do still occasionally find good used ones or even new ones it’s a 17 1/2 ohm thermistor, it would be interesting to see if you could get a thermistor and attach it to the bottom of the old sensor and fix it might be an interesting project.

If you’re going to put this in regular use and need that burner get in touch with me I probably can find a sensor for you at a reasonable cost, it’s also pretty easy to replace the responder with an infinite switch. GE even had kits back in the day to do that.

John

 

[tomturbomatic]

Congratulations on Your Great Acquisition!

It's nice that the oven was not cleaned excessively so the liner is in good shape. Interesting that a 30 inch range used a double unit griddle.

 

[henene4]

I think these P7's are a miracle of technology and a great proof of high temp self cleaning - that it works so wonderfully and can be made reliable.

An oven cavity coming up to 60 years old, looking almost like new - only true self cleaning could do that.