Microwave ovens and Leonids

 "There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." - Søren Kierkegaard

Yesterday the stars aligned to deal with the microwave oven.  I had time, energy, and motivation to attempt the installation.  As is usually the case, a 30 minute job took a couple of hours, end to end.  First of all, the original scene of the crime:

 The little white microwave oven was borrowed from the RV.  It's seen more use as a stand-by oven than it ever did in the RV.  The steel framework still mounted to the top of the opening was to retain the previous oven's trim kit face-plate.  The replacement trim kit is mounted with less expensive hardware.

Below:  Details of the earlier hardware.  I kept it in place just in case the new oven used the same mounting hardware.  No such luck.  The previous oven had a little tab at the back that slid under the steel foot.

Unboxing!  I love unboxing, unless it's for a project that I don't really want to tackle, LOL.

The previous microwave oven had a sheet metal box structure underneath to lift it to the center of the enclosure.  This one has two rails that are mounted to the bottom of the microwave, and which slide into a sheet metal guide that you install ahead of time in the cabinet opening.

Below:  Rails installed.

Because this is also a convection oven, it generates a lot of extra heat that must be removed from the cabinet.  For this reason, the trim kit comes with a duct to move the air forward, and the trim ring has a significant gap to the front of the cabinet to release the hot air.

Below:  The sheet metal duct that attaches to the rear of the microwave.  There was an issue with this, because the instructions said to remove the screw at the bottom left tab on the duct.  Unfortunately, that screw was a tamper-proof design.

The head of the tamper-proof screw that the instructions said had to hold that tab in place.  I definitely don't have one of these tools in the shop.  Maybe Amazon sells them.  

There's probably a law mandating these type of screws on the chassis - for consumer safety.  I probably won't be repairing this one when it fails.  All part of the process of making you buy expensive new stuff or pay for expensive repairs when something minor goes wrong!

So here's what it looked like right before I slid the oven in place.

The new trim ring gets screwed in top and bottom with drywall screws, which are angled into the cabinet at a 45 degree angle.  Pretty cheesy installation, if you ask me.

It looks nice, at least.  It took a couple of trips out to the shop - the first one for the tools that the installation manual called for, and a second trip to see if I had any tamper-proof screwdriver heads. 

Afterwards it took several trips to the shop to replace the tools and to load the empty boxes into the back of the plow truck.  The truck bed is half-full already, and I haven't even loaded any of the household trash yet.  Between the old microwave oven, and the boxes for the computer monitor, the new oven, and the trim kit, it's adding up to a high-priority run to the transfer station. 

The Leonid meteor shower was earlier this morning, about the time a storm system started raining and snowing all over the Northwest US.  I'm pretty sure this is why large telescopes aren't installed here.  Astronomers prefer to spend their hard-acquired money in places where there are fewer overcast nights - or at elevations where the telescopes are well above the weather.