*Replacing An Igniter*
Propane Oven Igniters
By: Jaden
27 March 2005

Notes in Red added by Brian 11/13/2007

Our oven quit working one night. Turned it on, let it pre-heat and then went to throw the pizza in and the oven was stone cold. Hmm… dug out the Coleman oven and cooked with it. It pays to have back ups.

I started trouble shooting the problem. I tapped the gas valve with a screwdriver and started looking for loose wires. Our stove is a Kenmore with electronic ignition. I talked to the local appliance shop and got some advice. I came back home and checked the igniter. When the oven is turned on, the igniter is supposed to heat and glow red, when it gets hot enough it’ll open the gas valve and then fire the burner.

So I started poking around the igniter and found the problem. One of the wires fell out of the back of the stupid thing…yea, that could be an issue. The igniter is located on the side of the burner and near the rear of the stove (at least ours is).

Old igniter

Next day I landed at the appliance shop and about 10 minutes and 40 bux later walked out with a new igniter. Note: It is very important that you do not touch the black surface of an igniter. The oils that are on a human hand can create a hot spot on the igniter that will lead to premature failure. Only handle the igniter by the white insulator.

It has wires protruding that are terminated with a plug. A handy sticker says "do not alter electrical connections" and some other stuff. Well my stove don’t have a plug, I have to alter the connections. Good enough. Note: If the stove is in warranty modifying these wires is enough to void it! The best way to obtain the proper igniter is to bring the old one with you to either an appliance parts store or bring it to a heating and cooling supply house to avoid future problems.

So I simply cut the old wires out of the stove, cut the plug off the new igniter and spliced the wires in to the stove. Then I mounted the igniter back to the burner. Note: this is a common practice in the industry for repairmen but it should be noted that it would be better to cut the wires and connector off of the old igniter and splice them to the new igniter. This avoids cutting the stoves wiring. It should also be noted that the wire nuts are not rated to the temperatures that an oven can produce and all connections need to be outside of the oven compartment.

Oven burner

So after all the shields were back in place I turned the knob. The igniter began to glow orange and about 20 seconds later the burner fired. Left pic is with the flash and the right with out. The orange glow is the igniter and the blue is the flame from the burner.

The replacement process was quite easy. Once I understood how the thing worked it made sense.
Jaden

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