I'm back! And look what I brought with me....

[harvestgold]

Tappan stove

My friends mom has the same Tappan stove but it is electric it was original when she bought the house new, she just loves it,but when she has it serviced they have to search the entire U.S. to find parts.I love going over her house for dinner an watch her cook on that stove it is way fabulous

 

[tomturbomatic]

They had troubles with having a broiler in the top of the gas ovens. The pilot light would not stay lighted so they were forced, in the more expensive lines, to use electric ignition for the broiler, put the broiler next to the oven in 40" models or do what most of the gas 30" models did, have the broiler in a pullout drawer between the cooktop and the bottom of the oven which ruined the lines of the range. In an apartment building, I saw a Welbuilt 30" with lower oven and glass door upper oven. The upper oven burner was raised maybe 6 inches above the floor of the oven and you could broil under it. With the puny heat output and no MicroRay broiler burner, there was no danger of food being too close to the flame.

 

[dalangdon]

Model Number Confusion

I have been calling around trying to locate the sensor for the Thermostatic burner, but everybody keeps telling me that the model number (DCAKNR-442B) is not a Tappan Model number.

Were these things farmed out to someone else for construction? Was it because they didn't seem to make that many of these?

 

[polkanut]

I'm absolutely "PEA GREEN" with envy! I think that Tappan range would be the BOMB in any kitchen.

 

[maytagbear]

The bomb?

Well, we rather hope not, that instead, it would be the place of many delicious meals

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[deeptub]

Dan, my grandmother had a Tappan Silhouette range with those exact burners. The flame comes out as a continuous circle around the center insert--very cool looking, and Tappan bragged that they couldn't clog because of this design. Her range had a burner-with-a-brain and that particular burner had a completely different center insert--rather than three kidney-shaped holes it just had one giant hole. The spring-loaded temp senser rose up through the burner from its bracket on the bottom of the burner box. It was a thermocouple -type sensor.

The knob for that burner was marked "Thermo" (I think). You turned the knob to set the temperature, and pushed the knob in and turned it to set the flame height. Does yours have this sort of control? Because of the way none of your burner's center inserts are of the BWAB style, my thoughts are that either your range never had a BWAB, or the BWAB failed early in its life and a tech replaced it with a regular burner. I remember that the manual for my grandma's Tappan covered a lot of models and was very ambiguous about features.

Hope this helps.
T.

 

[dalangdon]

Hey Tom,

Supposedly, the sensor plugs into a little outlet at the back of the burner, by where the burner head plugs into the gas line, and it sits on the center insert.

I don't *think* it has been swapped out, because the valve looks like what the service manual says it should look like. However, the people who owned this stove were manic in keeping the records on it, and had everything repaired everytime anything broke. I don't see a specific reciept for repair of that burner, but since they are all handwritten, some are pretty cryptic.

I guess I won't know until the gas line gets put in and we hook the thing up. I hope it has been swapped out, as those burner-with-a-brain things don't impress me much.

Worse case scenario, from what I understand, is that the thing works on high all the time. No variation - either full on or totally off. It will be the "boiling water" burner

 

[deeptub]

Dan, if I had read the previous posts more throroughly, I would have known you were forearmed with a service manual and wouldn't have nattered on so.

Hmm, I hope it's been converted too...somehow the thought of a surface burner turning on and off on its own unattended with--I'm guessing--no feedback mechanism as to whether it actually lit or not is a little scary. Does the pilot for that burner have a safety shutoff?

It just wouldn't do, to leave the coq au vin in the hands of BWAB and join your guests in the living room, only to be called
back to the kitchen by a rude WHUMPF! (and followed by the vindicated snickers of those guests who never could understand what you saw in that old stove anyway).

T.

 

[dalangdon]

I don't think it's goes on and off on it's own, Tom. I think it's just a matter of, if you turn it on, it's on all the way. At least that's what the service manual seems to infer.

In any event, there is an automatic shutoff for when the burner drawer is closed. And since I wouldn't DREAM of calling people to dinner with the cooktop exposed, the scenario you imagined shouldn't be a problem ;-)