Opening a Kenmore 790 range to replace burner ignitor

Posted by Appliance Repair Aid on April 5, 2006, 7:56 am

Hi,
A little penetrating oil may help.
Failing that you can:
- break off the heads and drill out the screws and replace them with
different screws
- break off the heads and replace the burners as well
- hope you get 2 for each burner that can be reused out and leave the
broken one alone
Not much can be done...poor design/style...happened on them all :(
jeff.
Appliance Repair Aid
http://www.applianceaid.com/

Posted by Heathcliff on March 22, 2006, 2:26 pm

Harry,
By all means check the appliance repair sites and see if you can get an
exploded view of the stove to see how it is put together. I had to
replace an ignitor on mine a couple years ago and it seems to me I had
the same dilemma: not at all obvious how to get the cook top apart.
Finally I determined that the top will tilt up. After loosening all
screws that seemed possibly relevant I had to pry the front up until it
popped loose, then carefully tilt it up; I could see that as I lifted
it up I was bending things under there, like the burner gas lines. I
just lifted the front up about 6 inches or so and then reached in to do
the ignitor replacement. Awkward. Bad design, I think; never had this
sort of trouble with older stoves. Come to think of it, those old
stoves needed clearning under there once in a while but nothing ever
went wrong with them! Bring back pilot lights!
OK, trying to breath normally . . .
I wonder if you could just repair the ignitor with some high-temp epoxy
or something.
-- H

Posted by hef2k on April 4, 2006, 10:58 pm

I agree, bad design. I did get an exploded view and that is
interesting, but the darn screws are frozen in place and I don't know
how to cope with that. There are 12 little screws, three on each
burner. If I go ahead and twist the heads off (as I did on the first
one I tried) I can probably get the cover up, but then I don't know how
I can get out the damaged screw shafts to run in replacement screws.
The high-temp epoxy is an interesting idea, but I doubt that any epoxy
could stand this heat right below the flame, almost in it. hummmmmm....
-Harry

Posted by Ted Mittelstaedt on April 5, 2006, 9:31 am

show/hide quoted text
The screws are probably soft due to the heat drawing all the temper
out of them.
WD40 does nothing, it is not a penetrating oil. It is a water-displacement
oil, that is where the WD comes from, and does that well. Use pb blaster or
some such, get at any automotive store.
You can drill out the screws.
Ted

Posted by hef2k on April 11, 2006, 5:54 pm

I did purchase and try the PB Blaster on the screws on another burner
and waited about half an hour, but the head of the first screw I tried
still twisted off so I'm giving up the effort. Guess I'll call a *real*
service person rather than continuing to trying to do it myself since I
don't want to risk damaging the stove with my efforts and then I'd be
in deep kimshe with my wife if we had to cook on a Coleman for a few
days. My guess is that I'd twist off all 12 screws, then have to drill
out 12 shafts, and then tap for larger replacement screws. It's truly a
horrible design, and I'll just write Kenmore off my vendor list for
future appliance purchases. But many hanks to all who offered advice.
-Harry

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Opening a Kenmore 790 range to replace burner ignitor - Page 2