Stinky Toaster Cure?

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danemodsandy

danemodsandy

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 6, 2006
Messages
8,180
Location
The Bramford, Apt. 7-E
Once again, I need help!

I just acquired a mid-1960s GE toaster - the same model that nice Mrs. Woodhouse who used to live in this apartment had. ;-)

Acquired from a yard sale, it has obviously been in a mildewy basement since the Earth cooled. Turning it on for a test produced such an odour that I cancelled the test and decided to get with you guys, who know so much about curing appliance problems.

The toaster is actually fairly clean - the odour is not due to food debris or vermin droppings or the like. It's just a mildew/damp basement odour. But strong!

Any ideas? I've been looking for this toaster forever, so I'd like to save it, instead of having to continue the hunt.

Thanks in advance! P.S.: Yes, dear Rosemary did love her chicken livers...

danemodsandy++8-5-2009-18-45-29.jpg
 
Make toast. Dark toast. Lots of it.

Go to a discount bakery outlet and buy several loaves of $.79 sandwich bread and go to it.

Give the toast (which will probably have an off scent or taste) to the birds or throw it away.
 
You'll never believe this

Run it through the dishwasher. Dont turn it on until its had a couple days to dry. I do it with Sunbeams that are skanky. There's a slim and none the dishwashing dtergent may discolor the bronze escutcheons so perhaps a bath in the sink would be a safer choice.

This one came through just fine.

mixfinder++8-5-2009-19-44-28.jpg
 
Kelly:

Can't do the dishwasher thing with this one - it has anodised aluminium end panels and other details that wouldn't hold up to the alkali in the detergent. With a vintage Sunbeam, I can see how it would be a great idea; those things are built like a brick - uh, toasthouse.
 
Frigilux:

I'll give that a try with "bird bread."

"Bird bread" is bread our nearby bakery thrift store sells at 10 cents a loaf; it's so stale that only the birds will eat it.

P.S.: I know that one should not feed bread to birds, but that's the name the store has given it. If you like, you can just think of it as "cheap, cheap."
 
Perhaps you can disassemble it and hand wash the stinkier parts in hot water with a good liquid hand dish detergent.

If that doesn't work, I second the advice to let it got through several heat cycles, to try to burn off whatever it is. But I think it would be best to try to clean it up first.
 
Toaster in the DW?

I guess it beats toaster in the bath tub!

~P.S.: I know that one should not feed bread to birds, but that's the name the store has given it. If you like, you can just think of it as "cheap, cheap."

Why should bread not be offered to birds?
 
Toggles:

It's insufficient nutrition for them, and they tend to fill up on it, leaving themselves not hungry for more nutritious food when it is available.

In and of itself, the bread does no harm, but birds near a steady bread source can quickly become malnourished.

Anyone wanting to feed birds should feed them healthy stuff, like seed mix and suet.
 
Washing

When I worked for Sunbeam the first thing we did after repair was dunk the appliances in a cleaning solution. It made them look nice and no one could look at it and say, "it's still full of guck, you never touched it." You can even drop a mixmaster in a sink of water and as long as you don't touch the sink you can hear it happily gurgle away. I do all kinds of things with appliances that only a fool would advise a layman to do.
 
I'm not real enthused about dunking an entire appliance in a cleaning solution. If it has lubricated moving parts, the lubrication probably would be diminished or lost through the cleaning.

I suspect the toaster in question needs to have the outer casing removed and cleaned. There might be a build up of mold or other substances on the inner surfaces. Additionally, the heat resistant material that the heating elements are attached to might have absorbed various odors from the environment. If the material is porous it might not be so easy to clean the stuff from it. Maybe several heat cycles would burn it off.

Older appliances seem to be easier to disassemble than newer ones. I suppose it may also depend on the quality of the appliance. A higher quality toaster might be designed to be taken apart and serviced, with regular nuts and bolts that can be removed. A low quality unit might be assembled by rivets, stamping, or spot welding that would need to be drilled out and replaced by nuts and bolts for full servicing. If one is careful an assembly held together by bent tabs can be disassembled by gently bending the tabs into the release position. But obviously there is a limit to the number of times this can be done before the tabs break off.
 
Toasting Is Working!

A loaf of bird bread later, the smell has diminished considerably, almost to the point of smelling like a normal toaster. I need to keep working on it, but I feel like I'm winning.

I'm very grateful for a recommendation that did not require me to take the toaster apart. My track record with disassembling toasters is not the greatest. I always seem to get the ones with a crumbling part that falls to pieces when the toaster gets taken apart. And of course, it's always a part that's unavailable...
 
Sandy, as Rich mentioned:

> the heat resistant material that the heating elements are attached to might have absorbed various odors from the environment. If the material is porous it might not be so easy to clean the stuff from it. Maybe several heat cycles would burn it off. <

If you can't get rid of the smell entirely, I wonder if 99% isopropyl/rubbing alcohol (available at drug stores), put in a spray bottle and sprayed on those interior plates -- and left to dry COMPLETELY -- would do the trick? Modern toasters use mica plates, older ones may use asbestos, but it should kill any embedded molds or other nasties in the material.
 
My grandmother ran holiday units from when they built them in the late 50's until they were sold in the early 70's.

Mum still has vivid memories of my grandmothers scrubbing the flip down sided toasters with steel wool in a sink full of water and then just plugging them into dry.

We're not sure how she got away with it, but she did it almost daily for 15 years.
 
It was 240v and back then would've been protected by 15amp Fuses.

The toasters were earthed over here, so it must've been just dry enough not to short out to ground.
 

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