We just bought a cooker which may not have been the bargain it appeared
at first. It's a dual fuel and the main element in the oven doesn't work
- no major problem (thinks I) I'll just fit a new one so we bought it.

The trouble is that when I went to remove the element the wiring on the
back had me puzzled. I expected three wires (I'm clever like that) -
negative, positive and earth. The earth is fine but the negative and
positive terminals are wired/bridged together (to each other!). It
doesn't surprise me therefore that the element doesn't work (it shows a
complete circuit so may be OK but looks dodgy so probably will have to
go anyway)!

There do not appear to be any spare wires dangling down so I am guessing
someone has been at it and messed it up. I'm OK with the multimeter so
should be able to track the relevant wires down but have no idea what is
going on in cookers so don't know where to plug them when I find them.
Should the +ve and -ve wires run straight to the element or does the
current have to go through another component and then to the element?

The other problem is that it didn't even occur to me that the cooker
could be LPG. It is. So can it be de-converted easily or would I need
the original burner bits (which we don't have) to go back to natural
gas? I don't know whether the conversion is done by adding bits or
swapping bits. If adding I can just call the corgi man and have him
switch it back.

Normally I'd be looking to call in an expert straight away (I fix
computers and know it's best not to meddle if you are an amateur
sometimes) but if I pay out on getting a sparky-type in to sort the
wiring and then the LPG deconversion can't be done cheaply without extra
bits I'll have wasted the first bit of money. Then it might be best to
dump the cooker and start again. If I know that both problems can be
easily sorted (in theory) and the cooker would then be OK I'll spend the
money. To do that I pretty much need to wire the element up and test it.

Can anyone advise?

In article ,
"Martin P Matthews" says...
We just bought a cooker which may not have been the bargain it appeared
at first. It's a dual fuel and the main element in the oven doesn't work
- no major problem (thinks I) I'll just fit a new one so we bought it.

The trouble is that when I went to remove the element the wiring on the
back had me puzzled. I expected three wires (I'm clever like that) -
negative, positive and earth.

A heating element will usually have only two connections - live and
neutral. Earth will be provided by contact with the chassis.

The earth is fine but the negative and
positive terminals are wired/bridged together (to each other!). It
doesn't surprise me therefore that the element doesn't work (it shows a
complete circuit so may be OK but looks dodgy so probably will have to
go anyway)!

How have you decided which connection is which? AC does not have -ve
and +ve, it has live and neutral. If these were bridged together
than there would be a bang when it was connected, after which they
wouldn't be connected any more.

There do not appear to be any spare wires dangling down so I am guessing
someone has been at it and messed it up. I'm OK with the multimeter so
should be able to track the relevant wires down but have no idea what is
going on in cookers so don't know where to plug them when I find them.
Should the +ve and -ve wires run straight to the element or does the
current have to go through another component and then to the element?

I strongly suspect that you shouldn't be messing around with things
that you don't appear to understand.