The top part of our double wall oven quit working a couple years ago. We asked an appliance repair guy if he could find a replacement heating element and after a few days, he told us he couldn't. We switched to using the bottom and recently I started looking to purchase a new oven.
On a whim, I decided to check the Interwebs and found several sites claiming to have the part that the appliance repair guy said didn't exist. I ordered from Appliance Parts Pros and a few days later the replacement heating elements arrived.
One afternoon I got myself mentally prepared to do the repair. I'm not great with tools so this stuff makes me anxious. I undid the two screws at the back, pulled the heating element out along with the two wires, put the new element in under the old one and one by one, transferred the wires from the old heating element to the new. I pulled the old element out, pushed the new one into place and reattached it to the back of the oven with the two screws. Total time? 5 minutes.
I turned the oven on and the element started heating up. I let it run up to about 200 degrees and when the thermostat kicked off I went ahead and went up to 400 degrees. I did make one mistake. I left my flashlight in the oven and somewhere around the 300 degree mark I realized it was still in there. It was hot and there are a couple of melted spots where it was pushed up against the inactive broiler element but it still works! :)
I checked the oven wall temp after the preheat had completed and it was pretty close to 350. We cooked a pizza in it last night and it came out great! I can't believe how easy it was and it saved us over two thousand dollars on a new double wall oven.
This repair was just about as easy as replacing a light bulb. I felt pretty silly for not doing it a LONG time ago.