You go to light the burner on your
cooktop and the
spark does not work.
What can the problem be? In most cases the problem will be because the
spark ignition module has gone bad. This
spark module is a piece of electronics that produces a
harmless electric spark at 2-4 pulses per second. Because the spark is a ultra low amperage spark, it is not dangerous.
A typical
spark ignition will look similar to this.
This box is usually in a metal box located somewhere under the cooktop of your stove or in the back panel of your stove. The easiest way to find this is to simply follow the electric wires that go from the spark ignition box to the spark tip located at each of the burners.
The spark is activated by a switch that is located behind each of the
burner control knobs. When one of the switches is turned on, all of the burners spark at the same time. The
spark switch will look something like this.
To
troubleshoot the spark ignition you need to determine if the system is
wired in series or parallel. If the system is a series system and one is not sparking, then none will spark.
Almost every time if the spark is not working, it is because of a bad switch. To isolate which switch it is, turn each switch till you find the one that does not activate the module to spark. You can confirm this by pulling the two wires off of the switch and touching them together. If you get spark you know that the switch is bad. If no spark happens then either then a wire is bad or the module is bad. If none of the switches cause the module to spark then it is a good assumption that the
spark module is bad.
By checking through these procedures you will be able to tell whether your problems are caused by a bad switch, a bad wire, or a bad spark ignition module. You will discover almost every time that the switch behind the burner is the part that needs to be replaced.
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