Magic Chef Oven Problem

[Jcslocum]

The oven in our Island Gypsy doesn’t was to light at all. The pilot flame is quite small ad I doesn’t seem to be heating the thermocouple, that sits beyond the flame about an inch. The Pilot lights easily, and stays lit during all of the testing.

View attachment 143990

The upper arrow is where the flame comes out and the bottom arrow shows where the thermocouple is located. The flame is very small, like a tiny ball at the end of the tube where the gas comes out of.

If I hold a BBQ lighter on the thermocouple for about 1 minute, the oven burner does light. Once the lighter is removed, the burner flame shuts down after 10 seconds or so.

I think the pilot orifice may be blocked partially? Has anyone seen this before?

I would make a guess that the thermocouple could be bad but the flame is no where near to it, so it could be heated. A new thermocouple is not available anymore, so I hope that is not the problem.

Any thoughts on this issue?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. J. Have you called Magic Chef? I does sound like a blockage/restriction somewhere. Might an aftermarket thermocouple work somehow?

 

[Bmarler]

I wonder if your regulator is malfunctioning. Low gas pressure can cause this behavior.

 

[BruceK]

Unable to access the attachment, invalid according to TF.
Perhaps not completely on point, I had that cooker on my 1981 IG36. I could not get it certified as part of the gas installation due to leaks at the valves. I would have had to add a safety sensor too as it lacked a "flame out sensor", the economic and safe answer was replacement.

 

[Pete Meisinger]

Personally, I would shut off the pilot and light the oven with your lighter. A constant pilot light burns an awfully lot of gas and if it gets blown out you could have an explosive situation.

That being said, most pilot lights are adjustable. Look for an adjustment screw and open it up a bit. You can probably also bend the thermocoupler to be closer to the flame.

pete

 

[Jcslocum]

Here are some pictures of the pilot and flame area. I don’t know why they didn’t upload properly yesterday.

In the above picture, you can also see that there is a small tab right at the tip of the flame arrow, that looks like it has been bent down in front the the gas/flame opening. I bent it back up about 1/2 way to see if that would make a difference. It didn’t.

Thanks for all of the input.

 

[Jcslocum]

Greetings,
Mr. J. Have you called Magic Chef? I does sound like a blockage/restriction somewhere. Might an aftermarket thermocouple work somehow?

I have not called MC yet, though I doubt they will be of much help on a 40 year old, long discontinued stove. I figured the vast knowledge base here would have the answer.

I wonder if your regulator is malfunctioning. Low gas pressure can cause this behavior.

The burners all work fine and once the oven flame comes on, it seems to burn hot.

Personally, I would shut off the pilot and light the oven with your lighter. A constant pilot light burns an awfully lot of gas and if it gets blown out you could have an explosive situation.

That being said, most pilot lights are adjustable. Look for an adjustment screw and open it up a bit. You can probably also bend the thermocoupler to be closer to the flame.

pete

The oven needs a pilot flame to let the oven flame start and stop in order to control the temp. I big enough pilot flame to reach the thermocouple would burn a lot of gas. We shut the gas off after every use anyway, so it wouldn’t use a lot of gas if I could get it to work right.

There is no pilot flame for the top burners, they have to be lit every time.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Mr. J. Ah! I missed the oven reference. Try holding the BBQ lighter under the thermocouple for a longer period of time even after the burner lights. I vaguely recall we had the same problem after turning the gas off to our appliance and was solved by longer application of lighter to thermocouple...

The memory isn't the first thing to go but I still miss it when I remember that I've lost it.

 

[av8r]

There was a service note on old Force 10 ranges that suggested removing the thermocouple and cleaning the mount and contact areas to make sure there was no high resistance in the circuit. The symptoms were as you described. Those thermocouples had a threaded shaft for mounting in a hole.