Replacing burner element in built-in electric oven?

[Gator95]

Wife saw the lower burner give out (she said lots of sparks) in our built-in GE electic oven tonight. Oven is of indefinate age, probably 15ish years old. Was in house when we moved in. Upper burner glows red when on broil, lower burner nada.

Googled replacing electric element, but the instructions I saw seem to depend on accessing from back to expose wiring- but since the oven is built into a cabinet this is not going to happen.

Any thoughts? Is it easy to just unscrew the bracket that holds the element against the back wall (after killing the breaker for the oven first) and pull out to reveal electric connections? Is replacement of an oven element on par with replacing wall outlets or switches-about my comfort level with things electric- in terms of electrical knowledge needed?

[OpaDC]

Funny you should mention a built in oven. I just replaced our indeterminate aged one. Instead of trying to find parts, figure out why it would burn biscuits on bottom and not be fully cooked on inside, etc, we went with a new one. WOW, glad we did. Works so nice.
Anyways, , when I pulled out the old one I was surprised how light it was, even with door on. I was able to lift it by myself, although I did get help because of the awkwardness of trying to carry alone. This is from one who is VERY CAREFUL lifting because of back. Even the new one was fairly light with the door off.
In other words, taking it out to repair may be easy. Four screws, undo electric, and slide it out onto bench or table of some sort. As to the electric, I'm not sure because I didn't really pay attention, but seems to me there was an access panel on back that appeared to be for wiring, but not really sure.

[dabeeler]

You change it from inside the oven as you guessed. When you unscrew the element from the wall and pull the ends into the oven where you can get to them you will see how easy it is.

[mschrank]

Maybe you can get it out from inside and maybe not. A few years ago I had to change an element in a built-in double wall oven.

I consider myself pretty handy, and I've taken alot of things apart (even got most of them back together ), but I didn't see any way to get that thing out without accessing the back.

I knew my Dad was going to be down for a visit the next weekend, so I had him take a look. He agreed that he didn't see any other way, so we took the oven out of the wall. Wasn't really too bad, but it was definately a 2-man job. Once we got it out, I was was still convinced that taking it out of the wall was the only way. Really poor design, IMHO.