The short answer
F1-2 is how this oven reports a problem in the temperature sensor circuit. The documented wording sits in the table below; the ranking beneath it is what decides where to start. Keep using it only while the results are acceptable.
The documented code and its meaning
Reference| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| F1-2 | There may be a problem with the Oven Temperature Sensor, the Control, or the associated wiring. |
What you actually observe
- The oven takes far longer than it used to — A control that cannot trust its reading waits rather than stops.
- The code appears once the unit is hot, not at the start — That timing is the most useful thing you can tell a technician.
- Results are uneven from one use to the next — An intermittent reading gives an intermittent result.
- NEAR MISS — no heat at all, ever — That is a heating-circuit or supply question and it belongs elsewhere.
Causes, most likely first on this oven
- The sensor element itself drifting out of range or going open — A resistance sensor fails gradually, so the appliance often runs badly for weeks before the control finally rejects the reading.
- Corrosion or slackness at the sensor plug — It is the hottest and dampest connector in the circuit, and that is why the plug beats the element to failure so often.
- Chafed sensor wiring where it passes through the cavity wall — The grommet at the wall is where the covering wears, and bare copper against steel presents to the control as a short.
- The board input that reads the sensor — Genuinely uncommon: the input stage on the board outlives the sensor and its wiring by a wide margin.
Check in this order, and why
- Note whether the fault appears cold or only once the unit is hot — A cold fault points at the wiring and the plug; a hot one points at the sensor itself.
- Get the sensor resistance read at the plug — A single resistance figure at the plug tells element, wiring and board apart at once.
- Have the plug at the sensor examined for corrosion and heat damage — Heat damage or green on the pins is cheap to find and cheap to fix, and it is found often.
- Keep the board as the last suspect — Everything else in the chain is cheaper and more likely, so the board waits until last.
What an owner can safely check
- Drop the breaker for a minute and bring it back — Sometimes a stored fault goes for good; an immediate return means it is live.
About 3 min
- Note the temperature behaviour you have seen recently — Food cooking unevenly or a long pre-heat in the weeks before the code is the useful history here.
Tools: pen and paperAbout 5 min
- Stop before the cavity wall or the rear cover is disturbed — The sensor run is not an owner-serviceable path, and this is where the checks end.
Before anything is opened
Safety
Power off before panels off. Unplug the appliance or switch off its breaker before removing any panel; a capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. A built-in oven is normally hard-wired, so the breaker is the isolation point rather than a plug. The cavity and the door glass stay hot for a long time after a bake cycle ends. The switches on the door are there to cut power at a particular moment. Leave their wiring as it was found.
When this stops being an owner job
Arrange a visit as soon as the code repeats after a power-down. From there on it is a meter on a de-energised circuit, and a wall oven has to be unseated from its cabinet before the rear connections are reachable. Three things override that timing: a burning smell, scorch marks near the controls, and a breaker that trips on start-up. Any of them means stop and call now.
Nearest error-code pages
What this page does not cover
What is written here about F1-2 comes from the code set shared across Maytag oven model lines on one control platform. What it is not: a reading for an older control generation that shows the same characters for something else, and not a source for wiring colours, pin numbers, torque values or part numbers. Those differ family by family. A family or model page, where one exists, is the more specific answer and should be followed instead; the index linked below is where they are collected.
Other Maytag oven codes
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