Greetings from Oregon-the shower me state. Just bought our first home and found a couple of peculiar things about our older Tappan range. Having once long ago rented a place with a Tappan range I remember being impressed with how quickly the 'preheat' feature would warm the stove comparatively to others I'd used over the years. Was happy to see a Tappan in our new home but noticed the knobs were faded/scratched and one of them was missing the metal internal grabber that hold the temp knob in place. (No problem got some N.O.S. knobs on the way). Last night though my wife noticed that the oven failed to come up to 425 and that the left back burner was hot enough to engage the evac fan and heat water in a pan placed on that burner despite it being off. After our meal and the oven had cooled down I inspected with a flashlight internally and found a 1 1/4 inch port in the left rear top of the oven. Removing the left rear burner I noticed a pipe coming from the oven in the same region as the port. I dropped a bolt down the pipe and wha~la it fell straight to the oven. No wonder the oven's not coming to temp if the heat is escaping from this port! What's this port/stack about? Is it missing some diverter flap or something? Thanks and a lift of the lynch lid for any responses. Gus

My GE DBXR453ET3WW 15-year old electric dryer takes way too long to dry. Sometimes I have to set it to 90 minutes two times to finish drying. The laundry comes out of the cabinet not as warm as before. I checked the exhaust line: no obstructions. Unhooked it and checked the no-load air flow and temp.: exhaust seems blowing fine and 137 degrees on Hot. With the exhaust still unhooked, I put a small load in for 40 minutes on Hot. The exhaust temp was 130 degrees and the laundry came out almost dry, but not warm to touch, as before. I can check inside the cabinet and the blower wheel for lint. What else can be wrong? Thermostats? Is the exhaust temp high enough? Thank you for the help.