What has happened here?

[Focalac]

So our oven stopped heating up. It's done it before and we had the element replaced. This time I took the back off to have a look and found what, to my untrained eye, looks a little concerning.



The wire insulation had turned white around the spade connector and crumbled away when touched, there's obvious scorch marks around the element and it looks a lot like the connector has warped. When I went in the back, the connector had popped off.

What on earth happened? I know what it looks like, but how?

 

[Strima]

Loose connection between the spade connector and terminal.

 

[telectrix]

it's a common fault. heat damage over time. did one just like that yesterday. cut back wire if possible. fit new spade connectors. the one i did was in a poor state anyway, so client is replacing. i fit on Friday.

in your case use the clean terminal for the new connection. make sure the new spade is thoroughly crimped. the cheapnon-ratchet crimping tools are a bag of shyte. if in doubt, a local spark can fix safely in a few minutes.

 

[Edtwozeronine]

*Adopts Scottish accent*

It could in fact be a potential death trap!

 

[The Ghost]

So much for MCBs' detecting arcs re another thread regards MCBs'. Sorry not quite relevant to this thread.

 

[littlespark]

*Adopts Scottish accent*

It could in fact be a potential death trap!

Was that “Absolutely”? “Stoneybridge has gone electric, with our new vidoe”

 

[Deleted member 26818]

Looks to me that it overheated.
We have here some wires connected to a metal object that heats up so much that it glows.
The wires look like they have standard insulation rather than heat proof silicon insulation.
Also, the spade connector is brass which expands when heated up.
This expansion can cause a loss of contact between the female and male spade connectors causing a high resistance joint, which causes further heating.

One other thing to note:
AFDDs do not detect high resistance joints.

 

[littlespark]

Ignore my earlier post. I got the wrong comedy programme completely. It was “the Mary whitehouse experience”
Too late to edit

 

[telectrix]

Ignore my earlier post. I got the wrong comedy programme completely. It was “the Mary whitehouse experience”
Too late to edit

adopting a similar scottish accent... "we're all doomed"

 

[Bobster]

The element you replaced it with was of the same current rating? Not a bigger wattage?