I couldn’t agree with you more!  My GE coil top is 4 years old, and still looks brand new.  I clean it every time I use it (the stove top), wiping up and spills or grease.  Then once a week my husband cleans it thoroughly.  The drip pans still shine.

Now the oven I’m not so anal about.  Out of sight out of mind.  But I do clean up spills and splatters right away and keep a sheet of heavy duty foil on the floor.  I clean the oven thoroughly about once every 6 months.

I had smooth tops twice in the 90’s.  Way more work to keep that black glass clean, ya have to clean the whole thing after any soiling. 

Eddie

Chuck,

its a conventional electric oven, not convection.  I place it under the bottom element, not touching the element or terminal box.

 My oven bakes evenly and true to temp on the dial.   So my experience is that it just keeps the oven floor clean without any adverse effects.

 The owners manual says don’t do it, but I’ve always done this and been careful about changing the foil keeping it clean and not touching the element.

Eddie

Induction wins by a country mile, it is just like cleaning the kitchen countertops.

Next best are either electric coil tops or black glass tops, both have advantages and disadvantages, coil elements will burn off soil that gets on the element without damage, glass tops are simpler to clean but may need a scraper and special cleaner.

The only white glass smooth-top that was pretty easy to keep clean and white were the original Corning ware CTs where all four elements had thermostats so the surface temp could not go over 550F.

Gas is by far the most difficult, there is no such thing as an easy to clean gas range top if it is used a lot and it will show permeant damage very soon to the burner grates and often the burner caps etc.

Putting foil on the floor of an electric oven will not hurt anything if it has an exposed heating element [ put foil under the element, it does not matter if it touches the plate where the element attaches to the back of the oven ]

DO NOT put foil on the floor of any gas oven or electric oven with a hidden element, damage to the oven will result and it may also affect performance.

John L.

 “Low end calrod ranges often have pans rocking on them.”

This is mostly due to the burner elements not sitting flat in the drip pan.  

Several years ago when I purchased my first GE electric range the owners manual gave instructions to remove both the plug in elements and the drip pans together and to replace them the same way.

You simply slightly lift the drip pan (1/2”) while holding the element in place and gently pull them both out together, and replace them the same way in reverse.  I’ve not seen this advice in any other manual since, and thats too bad because its excellent advice.

This way the receptacle  under the stove top that the element plugs into remains in place and doesn’t move.  When people lift the elements separately more than 1” to remove the burner,  the receptacle that the element plugs into also moves up, and it doesn’t go back down when the burner is plugged back in.

I’ve been following this advice for over 15 years and the burners on my stove sit flat in the drip pans, pots and pans on my burners don’t rock.  Now of course if the bottom of a pan is warped then it’s not gonna sit flat on any stove top, glass or coil element.

If you have a coil top stove try this method, it works.  It drives me crazy when I see  a coil top stove with the burners sticking up from the drip pans and not sitting flat. 

Eddie