Unbelievable find!

[dangerboy]

Today I found and put a deposit on an absolute MINT condition 1957 or 58 Moffat 30C75 electric range. It was Moffat's TOL 30 inch range in those years.

Now here's the amazing news: The thing has literally only been used a 2 or 3 times! It's completely clean and brand new!

Here's the story on it: The lady who owned it bought it new and used it only 2 or 3 times before moving with it and her husband across most of Canada in '57 or '58. The problem was the house they bought wasn't set up for it. It was set up for a wall oven (or whatever you call those) and had a stove that was separate from the oven. They had only intended to stay in that house for a short period of time so they moved the thing into the basement to wait for when they moved to their next house where they hoped to use it. They never moved and I guess never remodeled the kitchen so they could use it. So essentially they bought it brand new, used it maybe two or three times then moved it into a warm, dry basement and stored it there for over 60 years and never used it again. How often does something like that ever come along?!

The lady owner is now moving into a seniors home so her daughter and son-in-law are selling off most of her stuff and moving her out so they can sell the house. I happened to spot this thing on Kijiji today and jumped on it. I've been over to see it and I believe every word of the story. Everything looks completely clean and brand new on it. Everything is original and I don't think anything has ever been cooked inside the oven. There's only the tiniest bit of light residue by one of the stove burners. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a power cable so we weren't able to try it out so it'll have to wait until I get it set up in my house to try everything out but with so little use on it I'm thinking the chances of everything working perfectly on it are reasonable.

Here are some pics:

 

[dangerboy]

So for features (I think) it's got Therm-o-guard burners/elements, Super "king size" oven, a deep well cooker, rotiss-o-mat, therm-o-fryer, a warming drawer and a hand cranked elevator rack with about 6" of adjustment. Pretty much all the bells and whistles you could get in those days...

So what's the story on Moffat? Were they a standalone/independent Canadian company or were they a line or division of some bigger company? From another thread I found in this forum I found out that Moffat was acquired by GSW in 1971 and GSW merged with Canadian General Electric in 1977 to form Camco.

 

[wayupnorth]

It is a beauty. But what is that thing that looks like a crank of some kind on the front?

 

[dangerboy]

That's the crank for the elevator oven rack. The oven has a normal lower rack but the upper rack is on an elevator thingy (technical term) that you can raise or lower using that crank. It gives you about 6 inches of vertical range.

There was a Moffat range in an older house I rented back in the early 90s that had one of those crank systems. It worked very well and we really liked the feature and found it useful sometimes. It made us wonder why it never caught on and why other companies didn't put those into their ovens. Great feature IMO.

 

[bradfordwhite]

Awesome find.

 

[rp2813]

Fabulous find!  Enjoy using it!

 

It sounds to me like the elevator rack is oriented for use when broiling.  Interesting feature for sure.  I would love to see pictures of the other features once you have it in your possession.

 

[dangerboy]

You can see some of its features in this thread:

https://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?71698_9

The one in that thread is a '59 Model 30D100 which was very similar to the my '57 or '58 30C75 but has a few different things.

 

[kevin313]

What a great find!

It is a real beauty!! Love all the features it has - Enjoy!!

 

[dangerboy]

Who can tell me more about Moffat? Was it a completely independent Canadian company? Or was it a subsidiary or division of another company that had other appliance lines?

One thing I'm wondering about is how hard is it going to be to get parts for this thing if I ever need them. My hope is the "wear items" such as burners, elements and oven thermostat were not proprietary or unique to Moffat. If that's the case, finding replacements/spares for those things is going to be a real challenge/nightmare.

Hopefully, they sourced those things from some other company like GE or whatever and the parts are more available and easily located. I noticed that the chrome pull for the warming drawer and the switch for the warming drawer looked very similar if not identical to those parts on my 1955 GE Stratoliner and 1956 GE Speedster 40" ranges. I'm hoping that means Moffat sourced a lot of parts for their ranges from other more mainstream appliance manufacturers.

When I get the thing home, one of the first things I'm going to do is open the back so I can identify the make and model of the oven thermostat. Keeping my fingers crossed it's not something totally obscure and pure unobtanium.

 

[dangerboy]

Okay, I found a fairly comprehensive overview of the T. Moffat Company's history here: Check out the link if you're interested to learn the history of this once important Canadian appliance manufacturer.

http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2016/04/we-used-to-make-things-in-this-country.html

So now I know all about how and when the company started and how it got to where it is now but what I still don't know and hope to learn is where/who they sourced a lot of their components and parts from back in the 50s when they were still the T. Moffat Company and well before they were acquired by GSW in '71.

 

[kenanderson]

Moffat 40FA100W 5-burner, 2-oven Therm-o-gard stove

I've a similar stove, but it's a 1960 40FA100W. I'll add one photo below, and you can see far more at the shared link.

This stove has been in my wife's family since it was new. It's very well used, and would be a terrific project for a person with more time and space than I have.

If any of you can direct me to a site or page that has more information about how to source replacement parts for this stove, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Ken

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KJPUJ9bp41U5Q1SJ9

 

[circlew]

I thought I remembered there was some connection between Moffat and AVCO - Crosley, which was based in Cincinnati. While Crosley ended appliance manufacturing in the US in 1956, Moffat continued on in Canada.

 

[dangerboy]

@kenanderson, It looks like that one was their TOL 40 inch stove that year. Dual ovens, both with elevating racks. It's a shame about that glass panel being damaged... :-(

I too am interested to know where a source of parts for these old Moffats might be. The Moffat brand name still exists but I'd be very surprised if they still stock any parts for these ranges or even have a parts list or any documentation on them.

My guess is that Moffat would not have made a lot of the components (e.g. burners, elements, oven thermostats, pulls and other parts) that went into their ranges and that they sourced them from other (larger) manufacturers. For example, the drawer/door pulls on your range look really similar to the pulls on my '55 and '56 GE ranges so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Moffat sourced them from GE.

When I get mine home and in the house, I intend to do some poking around in it to see if I can figure out who made the various parts. With that knowledge, I might be able to find the same parts in models made by more mainstream manufacturers that are easier to find parts for. Like maybe the same oven elements were used in some GE ovens from the same era so maybe they can be sourced that way.

 

[dangerboy]

@circlew, you are correct. That's all documented on the blogspot blog I provided a link to a few posts up.