Product review (5 stars): New life for an old oven
Our oven is an old Westinghouse wall oven from the 1960s, and it was working faithfully until this summer when the bake element failed, turning it into an arc welder. It was momentarily fun watching the arcing and smoke, but the last thing I wanted was a fire in the oven, so I immediately shut it off. We thought about replacing the entire unit, but old wall ovens are wider than they're tall, whereas new models are the opposite, meaning I would need to heavily modify the surrounding cabinetry to accommodate a new oven.

So I decided to look around for a possible replacement bake element. Fortunately this model's element is a plug-in unit; with the oven turned OFF, you put a lever (flathead screwdriver) behind the white section and pry the unit out, and slip the new unit in. No screws (thank goodness, because screws this old would've stripped completely), no paddles or wires to align. All right, but which replacement unit? Well, thing is, no one makes parts for a 50-year-old oven anymore, not even Frigidaire or whoever bought them out. I would need to find a bake element of "close enough" size and wattage-- I wasn't concerned about things like voltage because I figured the replacement element would run on 240V AC.

This element arrived in time for Christmas, and as it turned out, it's shorter than the original by an inch or two, and its wattage is a little over 2 kilowatts rather than the original's 3 kW. So it doesn't get hot quite as quickly, but that's fine, because the oven with the older element tended to perform a little too well.

The oven controls are garbage due to age, the thermostat is off by 50 to 75 degrees, but the oven now bakes pizza, cookies, and whatever else I want again. That sure beats paying more than $1000 for a new oven.