I received the following email from Charlie. Any advice readers can offer him regarding restoring the burners would be appreciated.

"Attached are some photos of the stove.  We just purchased it off of Craigslist for $140.  The guy we bought it from put it together from 2 stoves that he got off of Craigslist - one in Ohio and one in Illinois.  Both of those had issues with dents and wear, so he used one for parts to fix the other.  He never finished getting it working though and his wife had a change of heart and decided for a more modern stove.  Now I have to get it working with no knowledge of how to go about doing it (I tried calling appliance repairmen in the area, but none knew anything about older stoves).   I'm going to start by getting the burners cleaned and as you can see, I have some parts missing on the right side burners, so I will try to figure out how to replace those.

Any advice that anyone can give to me on what to do or who to call or where to get parts, I will gladly take.
Thanks again,
Charlie"

My advice to Charlie was.....

It might be worth your while to look for complete replacement burner - it might be difficult to get a old replacement burner top that will tightly fit (i.e. no gas leaks) your existing burner. You have the "contro-lo-eat burner" in front.

You might contact this seller on Ebay:  I have purchased parts from him in the past, as have some of Tappan Talk readers and his prices have been reasonable.

This is another resource (I purchase insulation and an oven light socket from them)

Tilley Tappan

What are the chances that two readers would send me photos of their PHADV stoves on the same day?! In my last post I showed an unusual ADV-668-7 stove.

Here's the email I received from Rudiedog about their PHADV-664-5 stove:

"Just wanted to send you some pictures of our stove, 'Tilley Tappan'. She is a Philgas Tappan. She has a Robertshaw knob for the thermostat on the oven. I read somewhere on this site that that is kinda rare that Robertshaw is mentioned on a Tappan.

I bake a lot...and this oven is by far the best oven I have ever used. Thing come out evenly browned and cakes rise level and not lopsided from one side hotter then the other. The inside is all chrome and it seems to reflect the heat nicely.

Here is question for all of you, have you ever seen another Tappan with the front burners like ours? The outside is a big ring of fire but the center is a small ring for gentlely melting chocolate or making cheese sauces that you don't want to scorch?

Also, when we bought this cooking marvel from the Goodwill store, it had a cracked front grate. I need another. Anybody got one?

It's fun to receive notes from people that do serious baking & cooking with their stoves.  This is probably the #1 question I received about the stoves....how do they bake?

This is another one of these stoves with a combination of interesting features: chrome knob rings, stove top knobs say front and rear (I haven't seen this before, but went back to check Michale B's PHADV stove and his also has these knobs), chrome trim around the oven window, and Time Control clock for the automatic oven. Philgas Tappan appears on the oven door, a nice touch I also have not seen before.  It's a Super 60 stove. Also, notice the cute Tappan Doughboy salt & pepper shakers.

As first I didn't pay a lot of attention to the question about the burner. I thought it referred to a "giant" burner that has a ring of flames on the outside & inside, but then I took a closer look.  No, this burner was not like that at all. It has a mini-burner inside the large burners. And take a look at the interesting burner grates - with a small circle in the center. This topic inspired a lot of email exchange.....and I'm going to save some of it for another post devoted solely to this type of burner.

Also, take a look at the clock. Compare it to some of the older Tappan Deluxe stoves with the Telechrome and Timer Control clocks. More on this in a future post too.....

Rudiedog also tells us that in replacing the safety, she noticed the date 1955 on the part. This starts lending some credence to the theory that on these PHADV stoves, the final "-#" may indicate the manufacture year. Although, I suppose we have to be careful here as parts can be created before the entire stove. However, 1955 is later than most Tappan Deluxe stoves. So, more research on these PHADV stoves is needed.....

Rudiedog, thanks for sharing photos of Tilley Tappan.  Does your Owner's Manual have a date on the inside cover or on the back? And, I just noticed the switch on the upper right hand corner of the back splash....is this for the oven light??

The State Fair Mystery

I received an email from Michael over at the Cul-De-Sacshack blog with photos of his new Tappan Deluxe stove...and a mystery.

Michael's stove has the model #PHADV 668-7M with serial number 314964.  It came with it's original owner's manual. The gentleman that sold the stove told Michael that the stove was a 1958 model. The story that came with the stove was that it was a display at the 1957 Missouri State Fair and that it was purchased there and that the new owner had to wait for the fair to end to take possession of it.

My first reaction in responding to Michael's email was to assume that some of the dates had been remembered incorrectly. Deluxe stoves were essentially made from 1947 to 1954...or so we thought.  I guessed the stove was probably from 1950 or 1951.  I suggested that Michael look on the inside cover page of the original Owner's Manual and locate the date that appeared below Betty Brown's letter. I thought for sure I'd get an email back saying the date under the letter was 1950.

But, the plot thickened with the return email.

The stove's Owner's Manual did not have a date on the inside cover. However, it did appear to have an issue date on the back cover of the manual - "1040D 1-56."  (most likely meaning January 1956). On the cover someone wrote "1958." Note that the manual is for a "Super 60" (which up to this point, I thought was the stainless steel model - I haven't posted about yet).

This date lends credence to the 1957 State Fair story. So we have a mystery on our hands. Here are some of the clues......

This stove has all of the bells & whistles - amber glass burner rings, crisper drawers, the glass pyrogrates on the back burner grates, chrome trim around the oven window. This tells us this was an upper end model or a special build (remember Ron & Aiden's stove that was made specifically for one housing development?). The type of stove that might be put on display.

We know the features on this stove were new in the late 1940's...became common options in 1950. So, they weren't new in 1957.  The model AV 669 is a 1950-51 version. The model numbers aren't always in sequence, but it would seem 668 *should* be right around this time. The Deluxe models were being phased out in 1953-54. At that point they started to become much more mid-century modern.

But, there is strong evidence telling us the stove was from the State Fair. Could this stove have been part of something like a "stoves over time" display?

Any info, thoughts, additional observations, guesses?

Thanks Michael for sharing your photos and story.