Customer Questions and Answers for Gas Range Oven Igniter by Whirlpool

Hello Ed, This is probably a bad ground. On a gas unit, a spill can cause the panels to lose electrical contact. By the panels, I am referring to the body as the ignitor has to have ground present for the high tension voltage spark to jump from the ignitor to ground as part of the electrical circuit. When I service a gas unit and there is an ignition complaint, I always check for ground using the neutral as a reference. In other words, neutral always has a small "floating" voltage on it. When you test from neutral to ground you will always see from 3 to 9 volts ac "floating" as it constantly varies. When you see this, you know for sure that the ground is good. So I always test from neutral to the ground where the ignitor spark hits when it sparks properly. This sounds crazy, but it has helped me to solve issues where multiple service calls were unsuccessful in curing the no spark situation. The issue that this reminds me of, three different technicians had been there and the spark module and ignitors had been changed 4 or more times and the problem was still present, but intermittent at this point. I tested in the fashion pre-described and only noticed .5 to .7 volts ac floating. This enabled me to pin down the lose of the ground several panels down. I removed the screws and sanded around the points where the panel made contact with the other panels, re-installed the screws, and the issue went away.