Whirlpool 814381 Oven Door Removal Pin Kit OEM Part

I have a 10 year old Kitchenaid double oven with warming drawer below and electrical connection is located in cabinet below. I order a service manual from http://www.allrepairmanuals.com. If you have the service manual follow it, it walks a technician thru each step. If you don't have a manual here are a few highlights. Disclaimer the following is for my oven model KEBS208DBL8, your oven service steps may vary. IMPORTANT! First step turn-off the power to the oven (mine was a 40 amp breaker) at your homes power distribution panel. Flip circuit breaker to off position and use a lock on the breaker to ensure it remains off. The voltage may not kill you but the current in the circuit may very well ruin your day. Verify at oven that power has been disconnected (no lights on control panel). Since I am working alone I built a sturdy table that I could slide the oven onto so I could work on it; saving my back. Make sure to order the "Door Removal Pin Kit" this is key since the doors make up the majority of the ovens weight. With door fully open slide in the pins on each hinge. Close the door as far as possible and lift door upwards to disengage the hinges from the oven frame. To remove oven from cabinet you need to remove the oven frame side rails. Easy to do there is one screw near bottom of each rail. Remove screw and lift and pull outward from bottom to disengage top of rail. Now you have access to mounting screws holding oven to cabinet. Note slide the oven out about 6 inches or so in order to remove the bottom plastic vent cover; 1 screw on each side. You need to remove this plastic cover or you risk damaging it when you set the oven down; I did. The upper blower motor requires you to remove the oven back (11 screws). The back is simply a sheet metal shield to protect cabinet back and provide air channel for heat ventilation; it also covers other electrical components and the "convection" fan if so equipped. While not required I removed sheet metal from top of oven as well for easier access and cleaning of surrounding area. Removal of the blower motor requires you disconnect two wires from blower motor; spade connectors pull off easily. Pay attention to which wire connects to which terminal; make a note of take a picture with your phone camera. The blower is held in with 4 screws. To install the blower, reverse the steps above. Note that I ordered the Cooling Blower Kit, however it turned out I only needed the blower unit and the foam seal. Good Luck

Replaced both hinges. This should be considered a temporary fix only, a new oven will be in order soon as these are 20 years old and poorly designed. It doesn't take much for these mal-designed Kitchenaid hinges to bend. Be careful! Do not "over-open" the door, rest anything on the door nor slam it hard. Overview: you will be removing the door, which then disassembles into two large pieces (halves- front to back), replacing the hinges, reassembling the two halves of the door and reinstalling onto the oven. 20-30 minute project if all goes well. The tiny hinge pins are needed to allow removal & installation of the door. Some report using allen wrenches instead, with mixed results. To replace, open door fully, insert one pin in the exposed hole in each hinge. You do not need to buy the $6 "kit"- you can use the pins that come with the new hinges- but if you do, be sure to reinsert them before reattaching the door. Close door approximately 60%, where it wants to stay open itself. Carefully pull the door straight out. Do not apply too much pressure, as it wouldn't be difficult to break the large piece of glass on the outside. Have a blanket or rug where you can lay the door face down. Remove two phillips screws on top, the two (with small brackets) on bottom, carefully set aside for reuse for the same places they came out. lift bottom half of door (back) off, carefully place on another blanket or rug to work on it. Take a pic of what you see- the hinges must go back the same way with the same portion of hinges sticking through the slots- not hard, but it helps to have a pic. Unscrew the two screws holding each hinge, save. Remove the old hinges. The threads on the new hinges for ours weren't quite large enough- had to carefully enlarge using the screws themselves and a power driver. Replace the hinges, get the holes lined up exactly (you are fighting misalignment with this project), tighten the screws. TIP: clean the inside of the large piece of glass (front of door) before reassembling the two halves, as well as the outside of the small piece of glass on the hinge portion of the door. This is the only way to clean that glass. Make sure that the two hinge pins are installed in the holes in the exposed portion of the hinges. Line up the hinges in the oven slots, hold the door so that it will move flat against the oven and gently push all the way in. The top will not close perfectly yet. Open the door fully, remove the hinge pins, then close the door- it should seal and stay shut, light should stay off. If doesn't close fully, then check the alignment. Done! Some models use hinge "receivers"- metal pieces that the hinges rest upon, which also wear out and bend. Replace these if your model has them (check compatibility on the appliancepartspros website- if incompatible, it doesn't use them. They don't cost much.

Replaced both hinges... simple repair, took about 20 minutes. My only issue is that I replaced these hinges a year and a half ago to repair the same problem. Seems like Whirlpool could have designed a better door.

After reading several stories, I decided to install new hinges. The only trick was aligning the new hinges with the holes in the door and getting the sheet metal screws to bite. Otherwise a pretty easy job. This did the trick; the door now closes tightly. I did not see any bend or obvious defect in the original hinges. However, I noticed that the tension from the springs is much stronger on the new hinges/bottom door than on the old hinges in the top door. Might have to replace the top door hinges, too.

The challenge was removing the door. Once I found out that I needed a couple of pins to remove the door, the repair to less than 15 minutes to swap out the hinge which comes with removal pin already in place.