MA1301S LG Microwave - Overview

Unplug the unit before servicing. Need phillips screwdriver. Open door. Use step ladder to access and remove 2 small screws from top of the room air diffuser at top of unit. Slide diffuser slightly to the left to align the diffuser's plastic tab on the left side to rotate toward you. (The wires for the front control panel are at the far l ... Read more eft side of this difuser, but difuser is slotted for easy removal). Once the difuser is removed you will see 1 screw at the top that secures the pannel cover on the left side of the unit. Remove screw and slide this panel slightly up and out. This exposes the plastic frame that holds the upper and lower door switches. To locate the door switches and observe how they work, close and open the door and watch the door (bayonets) open and close the micro switches. Do the (red) buttons on top of the switches move up and down when the door bayonets push and release? If the buttons do not "pop" up when opened the switch is defective. The switch frame is secured with 2 screws. Remove screws and rotate the unit out for easy access to the micro switch(s). The internal (spring?) on my unit that is suposed to allow the red (visible) button on top of the switch to "pop" up when the door is opened was broken. Carefully pry the switch outward while being careful to lift the plastic holder-piece that holds the switch in place. Be careful, there is a small pin on the frame, so rotate the switch OUT toward you while lifting (carefully) the plastic holder-piece (you will see it on top of the switch). You can use an ohm meter to test the continuity of the switches. But if the buttons don't "pop" they are defective. Replace switch and reassemble.

Watched a couple of repair videos on Youtube by searching for the model number. Found out what to do in order not to get shocked by the powerful capacitor.
Ordered the two switches (To be sure, I could have ordered a third switch as suggested in the videos.)
Bought a tamper-proof star bit to get the cover off. Followed the dir ... Read more ections to replace the switches. - I broke the harness and had to use some super glue, but it's all good. I should have removed the harness instead of trying to get a switch out while it was still in place.
It's all back together, and the wife is happy!!

We have a Jenn-Air microwave and oven combination that is installed as a "stack" in a cabinet. The light bulb had burned out, and I read some of the posts on the partselect.com site about how others performed this replacement; ours was a bit different.
To replace the microwave light bulb, we had to remove the entire microwave and ... Read more oven stack from the cabinet. There were four anchor screws on the sides (two on each side) of the microwave that were driven in perpendicular to the face of the microwave. There were four more screws that were on the sides of the oven that could be accessed once the oven door was open.
With those anchor screws removed, we had to carefully pull the entire microwave / oven stack from the cabinet to reach the top cover of the microwave. We used an old wooden crate to hold the front of the oven and left the back of the oven resting in the cabinet enclosure. This gave enough room to access the screws on the top cover of the microwave, without having to lift the entire stack down to the floor.
At this point, I could unplug the microwave power cord, which was plugged in to a socket built into the top of the conventional oven part of the stack.
The top cover of the microwave was attached with regular Phillips head screws, so those were easy to remove. Several other instructions indicated I would need a torx or star drive screwdriver, but I did not.
Once the screws were removed from the top cover of the microwave, the cover can slide rearward to be removed. However, there are two metal strips that run vertically along the sides of the microwave and at the top of the microwave, these bends over at a right angle over the top of the microwave. The top cover has tabs that sticks up vertically from the cover, so that the bent strips prevents the cover tabs from passing as the cover is slid backwards. The vertical strips have several screws connecting it to the body of the microwave. On one of the vertical strips, I removed the two of these screws closest to the top of the microwave. Then, I gently pushed a wood chisel, because of the bevel angle, between the vertical metal strip and the microwave body. This moved the bent-over portion of the vertical strip far enough away from the microwave that the tab on the top cover cleared the strip, and I could then remove the top cover.
With the top cover removed, I could see the old light bulb. It is attached with a push-in electrical connection that was easily pulled off. One Phillips head screwdriver held the old bulb in place towards the rear of the microwave. Towards the front of the microwave, a small plastic post holds the front of the bulb. I removed the screw and pulled out the old bulb.
The new bulb fits easily into the same plastic post and screw connection. However, the new bulbs connector prongs are bent at a 90 degree angle to the original bulb. Instead of sticking straight out from the microwave, which was how the old bulb was configured, the new bulb prongs pointed to the right side of the microwave (as viewed from the front). Fortunately, the wiring harness in the microwave that connects to the light bulb had a zip tie that was loose enough to get enough slack for the push-in connector to reach the new bulb's prongs.
After the bulb was in, I reversed the steps described above, making sure to leave the chisel in place until the top cover had been secured back in place. Once the chisel was removed from the vertical metal strip, the bent portion again would prevent easy removal of the top cover. I made sure to plug the microwave power cord back into the outlet on the conventional oven, then we slid the entire unit back into the cabinet enclosure, and I put the anchor screws back to hold the stack into the cabinet.
Three of us worked on this - mostly to help pull the stack out of the cabinet and to help steady it while the front was resting on the wood crate. This is not a single-person job. It was not terribly difficult, but the number of steps is very tedious. I found a helpful YouTube video "How to uninstall/install a Jenn-Air JMC8127DD/JMC8130DD Microwave Oven" posted by Ali The Handy Man. Being able to see that the microwave and oven stack was connected by a "bridge" (as Ali calls it) was a major help in tackling this.
After this, we suspect that Jenn-Air must have not wanted any repairs to their appliances. As I said above, this repair to replace a light bulb seemed unnecessarily tedious.