Do-It-Yourself Story

When our turntable stopped rotating, I would hear a clicking sound each time I used our microwave, like something was not properly engaging in order to turn the glass tray. Even though our microwave was 10 years old, everything else worked fine. I did a little research on the internet and found a couple YouTube videos that showed replacing the small motor in the bottom of GE microwaves. I am not a mechanical person, but it looked fairly easy, so I decided to try it. The AppliancePartsPros.com website was very user friendly and made it easy to find matching parts at a good price. I ordered a rotating ring assembly and motor for $60.90, rather than spending $150 on a new microwave. The parts arrived fast and were well packaged. I first tried just replacing the turntable rotating ring assembly to see if that would fix the problem, but it didn't, so I proceeded to replace the small motor. I unplugged the microwave and turned it upside down on top of an old towel on our kitchen counter. I used a flat screw driver to pry open and remove the break-away metal covering over the motor. After making sure the old and new motor numbers matched, I simply unplugged the old motor and plugged in the new motor. After prying it open with a screwdriver, the break-away metal covering needed to be reshaped a bit with pliers. I also discovered that it needed to be rotated 180 degrees in order to be reattached by sliding 2 little feet into openings on one side and using one screw on the other side. I thought it was kind of neat how GE made this covering so it could be removed and then replaced in case a repair was needed, without having the remove the entire microwave outer shell. I turned the microwave upright, plugged it back in, said a little prayer to the microwave gods, and checked to see if the turntable now worked - and it did! Not ever having fixed an appliance by myself before, I was quite proud and ended up saving nearly $100 by fixing it myself rather than buying a new microwave! Overall, the hardest part of the repair was figuring out how to remove the break-away metal covering plate over the motor on the bottom. Everything else was very easy!