By: Liz Voosen
I broke my cooktop!
One week into our two month trip across the country, I opened an upper kitchen cabinet and a jar of honey fell out. It crashed onto the glass cooktop with a loud and ominous sound. The honey jar was ok. The cooktop did not fare as well.
Lesson learned. Glass jars get stored below the counter.
But now I had a cracked induction cooktop. I was on the road, thousands of miles from home. I have food allergies and don’t like to eat out. (Having my own kitchen on the road is one of the many things I love about my van.) And I was hungry.
Our 2023 OnTour 2.2 came with a single burner induction cooktop. It had performed flawlessly up to this point. I’d sauteed fresh veggies, meats, eggs, and more on it, with terrific results. The cooktop continued to perform well even after cracking, which I was thankful for, as I still had lunch to cook that day.
Fair warning, I don’t recommend cooking on a cracked induction cooktop. There is a safety concern, especially with any scenario where water could get into the crack (think boiling-over pasta water, as just one example). But I was hungry, we were at a rest area in the middle of nowhere, and… did I mention I was hungry?? This was going to take some thought and planning to get fixed. And some time. We were headed to the next state over, into town to visit a friend. Surely we could deal with this there.
We are the kind of travelers who figure things out as we go. I suppose all travelers are like this to some extent. After years of road trips, we know that we cannot possibly be prepared for every scenario. We don’t carry an extensive tool bag, a spare tire, or lots of gear (unless it’s fun gear! Guitar? Check. Fishing pole? Check.)
PleasureWay makes a great quality van and installs quality appliances. They also have excellent and responsive customer service. I rely on this. And the internet.
We had a screwdriver with us. And a giant wrench from installing cargo boxes on the hitch. But not much else in the way of tools. I have a little bit of mechanical knowledge and expertise, but not a ton.
I considered taking the van to an RV shop and having them do the repair for me. But it was summer, the shops were overbooked and backlogged, and I needed to get this fixed asap to get back on the road safely. My 17 year old and I had tickets for Dollywood (Dolly Parton’s theme park in Tennessee) coming up! The fastest path to a repaired cooktop was going to be DIY.
Would we be able to fix this?
Once in town and set up in my friend’s driveway, my first move was to call PleasureWay and ask how to replace the cooktop. I wanted to know if this was advisable for DIYers.
Ryan at PleasureWay assured me the induction cooktop was a straightforward item to replace. He gave me the model number of the unit so I could order an exact replacement online. I had a choice to replace the whole unit or just the glass. I opted for replacing just the glass.
Here are the Nitty Gritty Details
The brand and model of the induction cooktop in the 2023 PleasureWay OnTour 2.2 is True Induction, model # TI-1B. I ordered just the glass replacement directly from the manufacturer, but I had the option to pick up an entire replacement unit on Amazon or at local stores. Replacing the whole cooktop would keep the installation to its simplest form, but would cost more money. I figured swapping the glass out wouldn’t be too hard, so I opted to save some money. The glass replacement cost $60 + shipping from the manufacturer. This was less than $132 for a complete new unit on Amazon.
Ryan also gave me specifics on which adhesive tape I would need (3M part # MMM-06493). On Amazon, this is listed as 3M 969 ATG Tape: 1/2 in. x 18 yds. (Clear Adhesive on Tan Liner). It cost $14.45. I could not find this at a local store, despite looking at several locations.
Finally, Ryan walked me through how to remove the old unit and attach the new one.
I needed a screwdriver (with several tips), a kitchen sponge, and paper towels, which I had in my van, and a few items from my friend’s garage – a sharp knife blade, a putty spatula, and Citrasolv (an orange-based chemical for removing adhesive). These items could be easily and inexpensively purchased at any local hardware store or Walmart as well.
In short, the cooktop is attached with two screws from under the counter and an adhesive tape on top of the counter. The first step was to remove the top two kitchen drawers for access to under the cooktop. Easy peasy.
Then I unplugged the unit. (There’s a hidden outlet under the counter behind the drawers.)
From underneath, I unscrewed the cooktop at two points. Then I used the sharp knife to carefully break the adhesive and separate the glass cooktop from the counter. This took some patience, so that I didn’t cut into the corian countertop. My friend helped out on this.
And it was out!
Then I spent some time cleaning off the old adhesive from the countertop. I used a putty knife, the scruffy side of a kitchen sponge, and a lot of Citrasolv and paper towels.
While I was cleaning that, my friend detached the glass from the cracked unit and put the new glass on, sealing it with a little putty that came with it. There are complete instructions that come from the factory with the replacement parts. It didn’t take long.
Finally, it was time to install the repaired cooktop. Using the double-sided adhesive, I gently dropped the unit into place. Then I reattached the two screws underneath, plugged the unit back in, and tested it out.
The new cooktop works and looks great!
It took us maybe an hour or two. The hardest parts were getting the old adhesive off of the counter and twisting into a few odd positions to see what was happening with the screws under the counter. I may have gotten a little sweaty in the North Carolina summer heat doing this!
Thankfully we had picked up a giant bucket of fresh-picked strawberries at a local farm stand earlier that day. They were a cool, delicious, well-earned treat!
In sum, I think this is a repair most people could manage on their own if need be.
And we had a beautiful drive through the Smoky Mountains on the way to Dollywood as we continued on our trip.
Happy Cooking!