Samurai Appliance Repair Man
Fermented Grand Master of Appliantology
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I don't think the oven thermostat is even in the same circuit as the simmer control for the cooktop, in which case it is unlikely that it's the root cause. Greasy connections, however can cause other problems such as leaking current to ground and raising the ground potential of the entire oven. If this is what's happening, then it's conceivable that this is adversely affecting the simmer control. How to check for this? Good question, thanks for asking.
Use your voltmeter to measure the electrical potential difference between the oven chassis (any unpainted surface) and a ground point that is on a different circuit breaker. Do this with the oven turned on. If everything is peachy with your range, you'll read less than 0.2 volts. More than that, and you have a leak to ground somewhere on your range, greasy connections are always suspect.
The OTHER common cause: dirty power. Samurai's 17th Law of Appliance Repair states that, "Raw power is dirty power." Power comes to us on the power lines with surges, spikes, and swells and then we crap it up further with harmonic distortion from computers and other home office equipment like copiers. The whole issue of power quality will increasingly come to the forefront of everyone's attention as we deal with an aging power infrastructure and the additional stress placed on it by the proliferation of home office equipment. You can read an excellent primer on power quality, it's causes, identification, and mitigation, here.
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