Quote:
Originally Posted by mel s
lonfu
The way I read boomer's OP his water heater is sparking, then firing... but only for 5 seconds before shutting off.
If that is the case a bad "spark/sense electrode", (Suberban p/n 232258), may be the cause, (it was on my Suberban water heater).
Mel
'96 Safari
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That is why I had him start with the ground wires. They corrode over a period of time and you get intermittent signals. If it is firing, but not staying lit, then the valve is not staying open. So, either one of the high limit or low limit run sensors have failed while under load (temp sensor buttons), a ground wire has been corroded or the relay won't stay in/closed so that the gas will continue to flow.
Why they use the word "sense" in the spark electrode I have no idea, but it either sparks or it doesn't. It doesn't "sense" anything. (suspect more money due to the word sense")
The only way I have found to test a board is to test all the other components, then through deduction, assume it is the board. The worst kind of board failure is when it is intermittent like he is describing. I've personally never seen a gas valve fail, but the relay on the board seems to fail regularly due to heat exposure. These little suckers get a little warm and the tiny wires in the relay coil click in and out of the circuit. So because it is summer time and he is probably located somewhere warm, would guess it is an intermittent open in the coil in the gas valve relay, which I've had happen to me personally.
Butttttt...... you can't just replace the 80 cent relay, you have to replace the entire board.
On the other hand, it could be in the control circuit for the relay, which is moot because you can't really test any of the circuits due to the fact that the board should be encased in hardened polyurethane plastic
For you tech heads out here is a funny one. MIL's frig quite working. Cooling system ok, wouldn't run on 110v but would run on gas, interior light wouldn't come on????
FIL assumed it was the board, after having big dollar factory techs check the sensors and they were told it was the invertor. They don't have an invertor, just a converter. MIL and FIL decided to replace unit per the techs recommendation. New unit would kick on, run on gas perfectly, but when 110v was used would shut down and give a high voltage error code. The 2 techs that went over the thing thought it was a faulty frig, so decided to replace the new unit. I showed up in the middle of all this. The inlaws were beside themselves because they are late 70's full timers and tired of running to the store each day for cold stuff.
I told them I could fix this with a beer, a lawn chair and a VOM.
Stuck my VOM on the battery terminals, sat in the lawn chair, drank the beer and watched the VOM. When the coach batt charger came on, it charged to 16.7 volts before it shut off, it kicked the frig overvoltage error code and shut down.
So, I replaced the (4)6 volt batts that had been fried by over charging them with a single 12v batt and replaced the bat charger, and Wal Ah!
The frig started working perfectly. Turns out the high voltage was kicking the control board out and shutting everything down. The old frig didn't have a 12volt high voltage control circuit error code and the slow techs didn't think to check the control board circuit voltage before recommending a new frig. If they did, they didn't sit and watch it while the charger came on and cycled.
My brother inlaw was happy because he had taken home the old (perfect)frig and uses it sitting outside his trailer to keep his beer cold hooked to a 5 gallon propane can.
Trust me, after he checks the grounds and sensors, it will be the board, assuming he has already checked the supply voltage to the board. Which is the first thing every one should do when trouble shooting, right????
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