Our New Stove Has Arrived, but there are some doubts

[Don Cuevas]

I'd been without a working oven since January, when one morning, as I finished a bake, the glass window in the oven door suddenly shattered.


Flinders!


Previous stove when it arrived, a year ago


Sears México Customer Service told me, after numerous phone calls, that in the end, the present model, a GE, made by Mabe in Mexico, was no longer available, nor were any replacement parts. So, they would give me a whole new stove! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva Sears!

Two weeks ago, we went to Sears to pick out a replacement. We spent about 3 hours in the domestic linea blanca department, as the various employees attending us made calls to other Sears stores in México to obtain the model I wanted. The level of  attention to customer was first class. I decided on a top-of-the-line io Mabe ("io" indicates acero inoxidable, or stainless steel cladding. It was similar in features, but more advanced than the old stove.




Finally, it was done, after a supplementary payment of $439 pesos (USD $25) to cover the cost difference between the old model and the new. I was told that it would arrive in about 20 days. Last Wednesday, it arrived, ahead of schedule.


New, io Mabe stove finds its niche


By Thursday morning, I was trying it out, getting to know its distinctive features. First, of course, the range top is of advanced design. I was interested mostly in the basic functions of lighting and burning. I was quite satisfied with that.

The real test came with the oven, and there, tentatively, it failed badly. In my opinion, it was over engineered, by appliance engineers who probably have never baked anything more than frozen enchiladas. The much vaunted auto-slide oven racks have always seemed to me to be a useless, annoying feature. Explanation: there are diagonal, hooked rods along the sides of the racks that cause them to emerge and retract in concert with the door opening and closing. The problem for me is that if I want to want to do something to whatever is baking on the lower rack, or rotate products shelf to shelf, it becomes very difficult with auto-slide racks. In fact, my view is nearly totally obstructed of the items below.


Auto-slide oven racks, previous oven


New Oven interior. Note the tack welds and the tray stops.
Further compounding the irritation are the tray stops at the back and front of both racks. I  imagine now that they were fabricated in order to keep cookie sheets and the like from shooting out as the door is opened. They would have been totally unnecessary if there was no auto-slide feature. Now they are just irritant bumps over which I have to lift pans. 


In the previous oven, it was possible to easily dismount the rods and disable auto-slide, as well as adjust, to a limited degree the elevation of the racks. Now in the new oven, it's only possible to adjust the upper rack. The lower is tack welded to the metal frame structure which provides the upper rack guides. So basically, I'm stuck with a poorly designed, over engineered oven.

A petty final nuisance is the oven light switch. In the previous range, it was a prominent button to the side of the control panel. You pressed it and it came ON. You pressed it again, and it went OFF. Now it's a chicklet semi-hidden among other, non-related buttons, and when you press it, yes, it does turn the oven light ON. But don't worry. You don't need to turn it off. It does so itself after about 5 minutes.

Did the designers ever consider that the baker might be in the midst of an oven loading/unloading maneuver and just might want the light to stay on? Not a big complaint, it's true, but one that adds fuel to my frustration.

There are other features which I've not tried out yet. One is an electrically heated upper oven drawer for plate warming, keeping food hot, and gratineeing. The previous range had two buttons to operate that: on/off and levels, as indicated on a simple digital panel. The new one has a two digital panel, multiple button arrangement that requires attention back and forth, and a minor in computer science.

In all fairness, I have been using both the stove top and oven quite heavily since it arrived. When I bake only on the upper shelf, results have been good. Also, even though I have RTFM, I haven't been able to unlock the restrictions served up as "advanced features. I also await the visit of the Service Tech who will show me how to use these features. How to deal with the auto-slide, integrated oven rack nuisance may require the help of a friend handy with a Dremel tool.

[Deleted]

Eisch dear Don...
All the travales you're having to endure.
The "auto slide racks would make me batty along with the lights.
I seriously think that were I was in a position to replace my stove/oven I would either put out the big bucks, but more seriously find after alot of research a la e bay etc.a good old fashioned O' Keefe and Merritt,Garland, or Chambers stove/oven.
All these "bells and whistles" you describe are useless to a true gourmand such as yourself.

The very best cooking experience I ever had was on an old state of the art Garland, restaurant worthy.

What a joy it was to have six burners,a griddle and best of all a sliding out broiler to gently sear some swordfish with minimal effort.

I would kill to have a cooking unit like that at my disposal.

[Deleted]

They definitely try to add too many features to even the most simple appliances. Those racks would drive me crazy.

[Don Cuevas]

Our friend, Mark came by the house yesterday. He's far more adept at these matters than I. He was able to unhook the pull rods for the auto-slide racks, thus rendering them manually operated, as God intended. They can easily put back, for whatever reason, such as selling the beast. But because of the integrated structure of the lower rack, to which the uprights that provide the guide rails for the upper rack, it's impossible to change the elevation of the lower rack. It's in a fixed position.
True, the entire assembly is easily lifted out but then there's no guide rails for the upper rack.

The keenly observant Mark noted that the inner walls of the oven have other guide rails in the metal walls. This is a CLUE that the present model was converted from a previous model that didn't have auto-slide racks.

I am going to ask the Service Tech guy whether plain vanilla racks might be available. Or I might seek compatible "normal" racks elsewhere, but that's a daunting task.

I am getting used to the light, although it's not ideal. 

On the other hand, the oven has been baking nicely. i've been baking at least one, often two things a day. I'm getting accustomed to adjusting the heat control, with the aid of my oven thermometer.

[tod2]

Don, it looks a very nice stove. Not ever having a gas stove I would have to spend a lot of time trying out the oven. In my present oven, I only kept two racks and discarded the balance to the garage storeroom. Like yours my oven has that mirror finish....which I am sad to say drives me nuts as the slightest touch or splash leaves marks. When its clean it looks marvellous of course.
The only drawback I see in your kitchen is the positioning of your stove. Right up in a corner so close to a wall must be a bit awkward but I suppose one can get used to anything, especially if that is the only place it could go.

[Don Cuevas]

The only drawback I see in your kitchen is the positioning of your stove. Right up in a corner so close to a wall must be a bit awkward but I suppose one can get used to anything, especially if that is the only place it could go.

Tod2, it's hardly a drawback to have the stove in its own nook. It works fine for me. It's very handy to have the counter adjacent on its left. It is  the only logical place for it, although it could have been placed awkwardly elsewhere in the kitchen. The line for the gas comes through a hole bored in the wall behind. Outside are dual LP cylinders.

We have been in a much larger, newer house close by, that has a kitchen at least twice the square meters of hours. But it's either poorly designed or the owners are not in it enough of the year to refine it. For example, the fridge sits in front of a counter and cabinets. Or maybe it wasn't as bad as I recall, and the fridge merely blocked a window, If I recall correctly, the overhead cabinets are placed so low that if I were working there, I'd be constantly hitting my head. But (no racial slur intended), Mexicans tend to be shorter in stature than gringos.

In this area, our kitchen is advanced and modern. It's based on U.S. kitchens (the owners live in California.) As an added bonus all the walls are covered in white ceramic tile with sporadic color accents, luckily not a gross looking traditional pattern.

We have something special, too: hot water! Many kitchens, as in our neighbors' homes have only a cold water outlet at the sink.
Our landlady seldom if ever turns on a light in the kitchen in daytime. It's her sense of frugality. The mottled, gray tiled walls give the kitchen a gloomy cast.

Our neighbor lady and her daughter who clean our house were living in a smaller, older, traditional casa ranchera that not only lacked hot water inside, it had no running water at all. All washing up of pots, pans, dishes, and at other times, clothing, was done at an open outdoor pila or tank. It was shaded at least by a crude roof. (What some of us find charming, myself included, for the inhabitants it's hard but normal work.) Despite what we might consider deficiencies of equipment, they take pride in keeping their house as well as themselves super clean. (The bath was in an out building, together with a traditional, wood fired clay or brick stove. Señora S. used to make great tortillas de maíz on her comal or clay griddle, but since they moved up the street to a more modern casita, the tortilla days are over. In exchange, they have running water inside the house, and probably hot water when desired.

En fin, we, the expats have a sweet deal. We got it made in the shade.

[Deleted]

Speaking of frugality, a lot of the residents at my mother's nursing home would sit in the dark because it is expensive to turn on the lights (even though France has about the cheapest electricity in Europe). The fact that they could turn on the lights all they wanted since the nursing home was paying made no impression on them at all.

I am still thinking about those racks. I can imagine no reason to have them permanently in the oven, much less "auto sliding." Even if somebody were a compulsive cookie maker, the baking time for each rack is different, so it's not as though you could put twice as many in the oven at the same time.

[lagatta]

I had the opposite height problem in the Netherlands. I'm less than 1m60 - 1m57 or 58 - about 5'2" in English measurements? and the Dutch tower over me and everything is too high and tall for me.

And yes, while that stove is cute, the racks are absurd.

Happy baking!

[Deleted]

Going back to the very first photo, I am trying to imagine the look on your face (or anybody's face, for that matter), when the oven window shattered.

[Don Cuevas]

Mar 17, 2016 5:50:15 GMT kerouac2 said:

Going back to the very first photo, I am trying to imagine the look on your face (or anybody's face, for that matter), when the oven window shattered.

I almost gave up that day's plans to go to Morelia to shop and get a replacement clamp for my juice extractor. (Stuff is always breaking or wearing out. It's part of the Law of Entropy.) I resisted the strong pull of to get back into bed, pull the covers over my head and hope that that bad dream would go away. But we went on to shop, etc, and a good visit to Costco, among other activities, was very therapeutic.

[tod2]

Don, I'm glad you do not find having only one counter top next to the stove a drawback. Your excellent cooking shows that. Although I am spoilt with an enormous kitchen here at home, I manage just fine when cooking in a teeny kitchen in Paris or even more confined, a kitchen in a hut in Kruger Park which is not even inside! I like a challenge sometimes.
Did you ever say what caused the glass to shatter so unexpectedly?

[Don Cuevas]

Did you ever say what caused the glass to shatter so unexpectedly?

Entropy.

[tod2]

Of course! "the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with time"

[bixaorellana]

Really, really fancy stove there, DonC! I also have a six-burner Mabe, but from further down the line, so to speak. I see you have the same kind of grillwork as mine, which is one of my favorite features. The salesman told me it retained heat for a little extra free cooking if one wished. I doubted, but am now a happy believer.

I have to agree with Tod about having the stove butted up to a wall, but can see there is no choice, plus it obviously works for you.

Mar 16, 2016 9:00:52 GMT Don Cuevas said:

I am going to ask the Service Tech guy whether plain vanilla racks might be available. Or I might seek compatible "normal" racks elsewhere, but that's a daunting task.

Not as daunting as you might think, since you have >>me<< to help.
As you undoubtedly know from stove shopping, Mexican stoves -- until you get up into the fancy spectrum -- horribly only have one oven rack. When I was buying my stove I told the sales lady, "If you can get me an extra rack right now, I'll buy this stove." She went next door to their repo section & came back with exactly the rack needed, for the princely sum of 50 pesos. Don't believe them when they tell you that you can find the racks in El Duende or similar stores. You can't.

Mar 17, 2016 5:50:15 GMT kerouac2 said:

Going back to the very first photo, I am trying to imagine the look on your face (or anybody's face, for that matter), when the oven window shattered.

I have had that exact same look on my own sweet face. You haven't lived until your brand new 30-gallon aquarium, freshly filled with nice aged water, pretty plants, and fish EXPLODES all over the living room as you are admiring it.

[Don Cuevas]

In further test baking this morning, I realized that the two racks are joined at the hip, so to speak. When one comes out, the other follows, and the reverse.

I was musing earlier what a toilet would be like if designed by Mabe?