Bare neutral at stove

[JoeNorm]

I was on a service call today and noticed the stove circuit had a bare wire as the neutral. Someone had converted it to a 4-wire and run a separate ground wire to the receptacle through the cabinet and presumably into the crawl. Not code compliant but not the craziest thing I have seen either.

I think it was SE cable and from some forum searches it sounds like this may have been OK at one time?

I told the HO's I would look into it, they're willing to swap the wiring if necessary but it's a long run on top of some labor so it won't be cheap. I'd rather not do it if it's not necessary.

Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks

 

[Little Bill]

It's fine if the circuit comes from the main panel and not a subpanel.
If it's from a subpanel, rather than going through the expense of changing the wire, I would just wrap both ends of the bare neutral with white tape. Covering all the bare conductor that you can at each end.
That's what our inspectors will allow in cases like this and when a generator is installed with an ATS as the main, making the original panel a sub.