Range is five years old. Started smelling a plastic burning smell. Slide it out and one leg of the cord is melted as well as is its connection at the range. Outlets in the house are reading 160 volts as are both hot legs of the range. Neutral and ground read .1 volts. Power company comes out and their end is ok. Says its probably the range but to check the connections at the wall. They look fine and are tight. Replaced the range last night. All is good. Wife has been baking all day and we ran it last night at 450 for an hour. Thought it was just something on a coil. It wasnt. Cost me a new range though. Wife said something about fixing it. Nope

.

Did the breaker even get hot?

No. Never tripped either. 40amp breaker.

What brand of range? 5 years sucks.

That could have ended a lot worse. Good for replacing and not trying to fix.

Frigidaire. Power co guy mentioned a capacitor. It has a convection fan and a wire runs frm it to the leg that got hot.

We’ll [censored], we just replaced a 15 yo Whirlpool (that worked fine) with a new Frigidaire!

This is it

Sum Ting Wong if you are measuring 160 volts. Not sure how you are measuring it or if your meter is accurate, but if that voltage reading is what you are getting, no bueno.

Across the black and red should be 240 and should be 120 from black to white and black to green. 120 from Red to white and red to green.

But you can achieve that melting if there is any resistance in the connection. If the Black lug was loose and adding resistance at that connection, there will be a Voltage drop and it will become like a heating element at the connection when a large current tries to flow through.

Since the breaker didn't pop, it wasn't an overcurrent condition but a voltage drop and heating at that post.

Anyway, make sure the new connections are tight.

I worked on cooking appliances for Sears for over 20 years. This is actually a pretty common
problem. Starts out as a loose connection right there on the terminal block. Loose connections
get hot, the wires melt and the terminal block burns up. Some of those terminal blocks don't
give you much working space, tighten those nuts good and tight, a deep thin wall socket helps.

Good Luck,
Bozz

thanks for the info. Everything was tight and is on the new stuff. triple checked. After the range was off line, the voltage dropped to 120 on both legs snd on three outlets in the house. Checked again this morning snd still 120. Its possible the connection was loose at the range, but it was tight when i removed the cord. I installed appliances for a few years at sears. Never worked on them though.

connection was tight because it melted together after the fact. imho.

I am not sure what is going on here but a loose connection is not going to run the Voltage up to 160 from 110. The Amps absolutely will go up with the extra resistance

SO if some of the more season electricians can explain how the power company's end could be good if the voltage went from 110 to 160 in the house regardless of what the stove was doing. The wire getting hot looks like amps went up but since the breaker didn't get thrown. I may be changing the breakers out with that 240 volt connections getting that hot and breakers not being thrown.

What am I missing this doesn't make sense unless I have missed something.

Bob if its a voltage drop and same power demand doesn't that automatically raise the amps? Why didn't the breaker get thrown

and if the power went up from power company to 160 volts the amp demand should have gone down because you have more power there from extra volts.

Corrosion in the connection or lose connection causing resistance somewhere in the circuit which is creating heat.

Watts = Amps x volts. Elements are running on 220V.

Stove is on a dedicated circuit.

If the amperage doesn’t get to the rating of the breaker then the breaker isn’t going to trip. Range should call for a certain breaker rating. It could be too high. Range breakers are typically 30, 50 and 60 amp. 60 amp are for newer more burner stoves. 50 amp is the standard breaker in most average homes.