On Friday, October 2, 2015 at 12:42:59 PM UTC-4, Pavel314 wrote:
On Tuesday, January 21, 2003 at 3:23:12 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Hello all. I have a 12 year old GE built-in oven and over the past
couple of months the interior oven light keeps burning out, I've gone
through about six or seven since Nov/Dec. The lamps generally burn out
when I open the door or push in the oven light switch, but not (with
one exception described below) after the bulb has lit up.

I did a Google search of web pages and newsgroups and came up with a
couple of threads, one about light bulbs around the house often
burning out and one about oven lights burning out. Both threads
suggested checking to make sure an impedance problem with the neutral
line wasn't causing an imbalance in the voltage on either side of the
neutral. Apparently, the symptom,would be a high voltage reading in
the socket.

I checked the voltage in one of the kitchen sockets and it read
118.2V. I then put one lead of the voltmeter on the copper center
contact of the oven light socket and the other lead on the threaded
part of the socket and read the same 118.2V.

As an experiment, I left one appliance bulb on for about 8 hours and
it survived and I turned off the light. But the next day when I opened
the oven door the bulb flashed and failed. I also tried a cheap 40W
regular bulb, which survived baking something in the oven but burned
out after a few hours when I experimentally left it on after I was
finished baking. That experiment was probably flawed though, maybe
regular bulbs don't survive baking.

I've tried GE, Philips and Home Depot appliance bulbs.

I partially pulled out the oven and could see where the oven was
connected to the house wiring. From what I could see, the wires were
connected with twist connectors and then the bottom of the connector
was wrapped in electrical tape.

The only thing I can think of is maybe the door and light switch are
corroded and when they make contact, they're making a bunch of
interrmittent contacts, cycling the bulb many times before a good
contact is made. That would effectively put the bulb through dozens
or hundreds of power cycles. That might burn out a bulb quickly and
explain why the bulbs haven't failed when I left them on for hours at
a time.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of problem?

I'm not an electrician but is there anything else I can try to see
what the problem is?


Thanks.

I had that problem a few months ago. The oven bulb burned out after a long life, so long I couldn't remember when I replaced it last. I bought a replacement at Home Depot and it burned out within a week. Bought another and the same thing happened. Based on advice from this group, I bought a 130 volt bulb on Amazon; it's still working.

Paul

I wonder how many of the people who say the bulbs keep burning out tested those bulbs in another fixture.

I have a gas stove in which the oven light goes off frequently, but not all the time, when the
oven is in use. It eventually comes back on, even while the oven is still hot. It's an intermittent
problem and I haven't been able to discern any time or temperature pattern.

I tried replacing the bulbs years ago, but it didn't help. The new bulb did the same thing.

It's probably an expansion thing with the socket, but I just live with it.