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Stove is a Whirlpool WFG510S0AW2. New to us, bought used, from a rental.

The behavior we're seeing is, when set to 'bake', the oven will light, the temperature display will show a rising temperature until the setpoint is reached (say, 350F), and then the gas will shut off. Fine, so far. However, the oven will not re-ignite until the temperature drops to ~240F or less. (To see this, you have to cancel the 'bake', and then restart it.) So, really lousy temperature regulation.

However, in 'diagnostic mode', this stove will show the oven sensor temperature. When observed, two things:

  1. When the oven reaches the setpoint temperature on the 'regular' display (350F) and the gas shuts off, the diagnostic temperature reads ~450F.
  2. When the oven re-ignites (as above, the 'regular' display reads < 240F), the diagnostic temperature reads 350F. After re-ignition, the above pattern repeats.

There is only one oven temperature sensor. Yet, it seems to have two disparate temperatures. Further, setpoint shut-off (350F) seems controlled by one temperature reading, and re-ignition by the other.

The functional issue is, it won't hold temperature. But, the rest is so strange that I think I must be missing something.

UPDATE: On further thought, I think it may be working correctly. Because the temp sensor is located quite near the burner, while the goal is to set the air temperature, it might make sense to 'overcharge' the temperature at the sensor by an empirically-determined amount, so that the air will have reached the desired setpoint. After the gas turns off, the sensor would be responding to the actual air temperature rather than heat from the burner, and so it would then make sense to restart the burner when the sensed temperature fell back to the setpoint.

If so, the 'regular' display is a computed value, adjusted when the burner is on to compensate for its being so near the burner.

George
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    What does an independent oven thermometer say? – Chris H Dec 23 '16 at 08:41
  • This could be a fault in the "timer" module which is actually more than a timer and in fact is a controller. If you determine that this is likely, you may be able to source a new one locally or online. There is a Canadian company in Ontario which sells rebuilt timer modules or will rebuild yours. How long has the range been in service? – Jim Stewart Dec 23 '16 at 13:29
  • @ChrisH: After some disappointing experiences, I'd sort of given up on reliably measuring temperature. Amazon reviews of various oven thermometers are not encouraging in this regard. I will revisit this - maybe try a naked RTD - but at the moment, I don't have anything. In any case, my question was re understanding what the stove itself was saying, independent of whether it was correct or not. – George Dec 23 '16 at 14:18
  • Unfortunately, with a gas oven including digital display the manufacturer knows things you probably can't - so reverse engineering with the help of the Internet is you best bet but may not be satisfactory. I have a thermocouple for my multimeter which is close enough, though it's instructive to measure both the air temperature and the temperature of a lump of metal (e.g. a baking sheetl over time. I suspect that the relevance to you is that the manufacturer makes assumptions about the thermal mass of the system in the user display, but not the diagnostic display. – Chris H Dec 23 '16 at 14:50
  • On our GE electric range the temperature readout changes during a ramp up to a set temperature, but once there it does not vary. So it is not reading the actual temperature variations around the set-point. I have checked it with an oven thermometer which reads very close to the oven controller readout at 300, 350, 400, 450 F, but it takes longer to reach a stable value than the oven readout would indicate. – Jim Stewart Dec 23 '16 at 17:39
  • @ChrisH: I think that's what's going on. If you care about SE 'points' and want to make it into an answer, I'd mark it as such. – George Dec 24 '16 at 12:02

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