Sylvania Microwave Oven - SC-11100

Drew reminded me of my experience with a dead microwave in the 70s when they had first come out. I'd bought one from Sears and after about a week, it made some arcing noises and stopped working. It took the Sears repair depot a few weeks to figure out what was wrong (they'd never seen one before) and after I picked it up, a few days later the same thing happened. Back it went. This time they fixed it quick (now they knew what was wrong..it was a failed high voltage rectifier). Got it back and the FIRST use it made the sound again. I yanked the cord from the wall to try to prevent any more damage. A good friend and I had recently finished up electronics courses at different schools and of course we each felt we had learned more. The tamper seals were long gone by the Sears shop fiddling so Marvin and I decided to look inside to see if we could see what was wrong. We were stumped as everything looked fine. Then Marvin said let's plug it in and turn it on and see what's arcing! I reminded him that without the covers on, we'd likely be cooked by the microwaves. His response... "We'll wrap ourselves in aluminum foil and watch it through a mirror!". My cooler head prevailed and after removing the high voltage protective cage, we could see where one side of it was "oil canned" in and there was a black spot where the high voltage was jumping from the rectifier to the cage. Simply pushing the cage out so it was "oil canned" away from the terminal rather than toward it cured the problem and I used that microwave for at least 15 years after that!