Magic Chef Pilot Light

[deadeyenevermisses]

I probably should have fired off the oven/pilot light before we departed on vacation but here we are in Edmonton and the pilot won't light. Not a major difficulty, because in trouble shooting it I discovered if I turn the oven temp beyond pilot the main burner will fire off with a propane match. Just an inconvenience for now. Anybody else suffered thesame problem and find a solution?

[Countryfolks]

I've always had to light the oven every time it is used on all three of the trailors we've had. I think the pilot is turned off/on with the oven control as a safety measure. It's always taken a long time to get it lit each time also.

[jimcol]

I can't say I have had the same problem but as Countryfolks posted, those pilot lights can be tricky to get lit. I always get ours lit after laying on the floor and adjusting the bifocals several times to get the propane match in exactly the right place. After about 25k miles I have finally gotten better at this task.
Jim C.

[Countryfolks]

I talked to Mary later and she essentially told me to RTFM [I just light it, not use it]. She said the book says the pilot light is turned off when the control is in the off position. Leaving it on pilot allows the oven to be re-lit by turning the control on. We use the oven for storage when not being actively used so the pilot is always turned off after use.

[deadeyenevermisses]

OK, now that I've finished laughing.......Skip, tell Mary she made my day but as a retired pilot I always "RTFM" (known to us pilot types as a -10)before I "fly". Once again, the MOC forum comes through!!

[bncinwv]

It is easy to forget (don't ask how I know this) also that the knob needs to be pushed in when lighting the pilot, unless they have changed this on the newer models. It requires an Acrobat to do it single-handedly, pushing knob in while lighting lighter. One thing I have found is that the barbeque type lighters (the long ones) make the task a little easier.
Bingo

[William H. Collier]

I had to replace the pilot light assembly on ours, pilot or burner would not light. Pretty much had to remove the whole stove to get at the pilot line as it was attched to a clip in the back.

Richard, you must have got the pilot tube hot enough to let the gas valve work, if the pilot is not lit or hot enough the gas valve will not open.
Bill

[helmick]

I use the long lighter and turn a little past pilot on and light the burner. If I turn the burner back to pilot on after a short time
the pilot stays on.

[deadeyenevermisses]

AHA, I remember that old "hold the pilot light button in to light" it was on my hot water heater before I "acuired" auto ignition.

[Art-n-Marge]

After initially setting up the trailer and with the propane slowly turned on, I fill the propane lines at the range by lighting all the top burners, then I shut them off. This fills the propane lines right up to the pilot light to minimize the time it takes to light the pilot. I find I need to do this even if I have been using propane to keep the fridge cold (owner preference). You would think that all lines would be primed with propane in this case, but with the range being considerably far from my fridge, I have found this step to be a necessity.

Then I open the oven door, drop to the floor, contort into the proper position and with lighter in hand I push the Oven control in to start the flow of propane at the pilot and light it up. I wait a couple of seconds then remove the lighter and see if the pilot remains lit. If the pilot is not lit or turns off I keep the oven control pushed in and relight it with the lighter until it I get the pilot to stay lit for 60 seconds without any help from the lighter.

After that works, I release the oven knob and leave it at the PILOT position until we depart the campsite. The key is to NOT set the Oven control to off while at the CG until you are planning to depart. The amount of propane used for the pilot is negligable (or so I have been told and seems to be true even in cold weather). As an additional measure, I might even turn on the oven, watch the oven burner light up, then shut it off after about 30 seconds just to make sure the flame looks good.

Unfortunately if you do these things and it still doesn't work like deadeyenevermisses implies, something might be wrong. There are some troubleshooting tips in the manual. But from later posts and his laughter I think the problem was "operator error".

Also, if you plan to use your oven for storage after using it as an oven, then I don't recommend leaving the pilot on after every use because it does warm things up just a little bit especially right under where the pilot flame would be. In this case, no contortion is needed. Whenever you want to use the oven, remove everything in it and just light the stove at the burner after turning up the oven temp - there is no need to reach way back to the pilot nozzle.

Most of this is in the manual that we don't like to read.

[racerjoe]

Here I go again, that pilot is the most aggrivating thing that they have ever done. What were they thinking when they came up with that idea. I hope that engineer does not work for magic chef any longer. They must laugh,just thinking about how we need to twiat and turn to get that lousy pilot to light. OK, there I'm done....

[Art-n-Marge]

I agree racerjoe. How hard would it be to put a spark igniter there instead of a pilot light? They have it on the burners, so what's one more wire run down to the oven (and a little bit of smarts for when the oven gets turned on and monitoring that it stays on. Bah!!!

[deadeyenevermisses]

Thanks for the input Art, unfortunately, as our 3400RL was a repo, the jerks didn't send along the Magic Chef manual. Maybe I'll try downloading one.

[KTManiac]

Deadeye,

Mine is the same exact way. It does not matter how long I keep the lighter on the thermo-couple and pilot(with the oven knob pushed in BTW), it will not light until I turn the knob past pilot and then the main burner fires up as long as the thermo-couple is hot. Then, afterward, the pilot remains lit.

Another thing that is messed up on mine is, the piezo-electric starter for the top burners does not work. What a PITA!

Update:

Success! After trying again to light the oven pilot, it is now working as it should! I basically did the same as always, but with the knob in the "light pilot" position, I depressed and released the knob a bunch of times in quick succession, as I held the BBQ lighter to the pilot orifice. A pleasing blue flame finally erupted to life, just as it should. I guess there was something blocking the pilot valve or some such, and repeatedly depressing the knob and releasing it did the trick. I turned off the pilot, let the thermocouple cool off, and lit the pilot the normal way with no trouble several times after that.

Yippee!

Also, as an added bonus, I found that the wire to my piezo-electric igniter for the stove's top burners had just come disconnected from the knob unit. Reconnected it, and all is normal with the oven and the top burners.

[Art-n-Marge]

All right KTmaniac... now you are cooking with gas... uh propane...