Built in microwave mystery

[rufrdr]

Several weeks ago during a storm the built in Kenmore microwave went dead after the house lights flickered. We have a whole house surge protector. I checked the breaker to see if it tripped, it hadn't. For the heck of it I unplugged it and plugged back in and it worked. Since then, if it is used for less than 5 minutes, it keeps working and when it is finished, the display is active. Longer than that and there is a good chance the microwave will finish the task but then the display goes dead. Unplug and plug it back in and it is live again. It never stops working while being used.

The outlet has 123v per my multimeter.

I imagine something is overheating in the microwave, but why does it come back to life when it is unplugged and p!ugged in?

 

[Jim C.]

We have an older (20+ years) built-in Sharp that did something similar one time, but continued to work fine after unplugging and plugging back in. Earlier this year a storm rolled through and it died completely after a nearby lightning strike and blinking power. I figured it was toast and planned to replace it when someone suggested checking the internal fuse. Some googling helped me find enough info to get to the fuse, which my meter confirmed as dead, and it's been working fine since I got a replacement.

No idea if the fuse could have caused the initial issue, but it was a cheap and relatively easy fix to it dying a second time.