Galley - Stove Won't Stay Lit

Our 1996 Safari Sahara 3530 came with a Seaward Princess 2273 two burner stove.  These stoves have a safety feature built into the gas valve for each burner to shutoff the gas if the burner goes out.

The following happens when you light the stove:

• You press down on the knob while turning it to the ignition position.
• Gas flowing through the value when the knob is depressed, is then ignited by an electric spark generator installed next to the burner's base.
• Once the burner's flame comes in contact with the thermocouple, electricity is produced and passed back to the gas value where it energizes a small solenoid that allows the gas to keep flowing after the knob is released as long as the thermocouple continues to sense the burner's flame.

Shortly after taking possession of the motorhome, we found we didn't seem to know the secret sauce for getting the stove to stay lit.  No amount of downward pressure on the knob for ever increasing amounts of time worked.  As soon as you'd released the knob the flame would go out.

The failure had all the symptoms of a bad thermocouple, but both failing at the same time?  That seemed strange.  I reached out to Sure Marine Service, in Seattle, WA about replacement thermocouples, and was told "...it is worth noting that thermocouples in general do not typically fail under normal use and you may have another issue that does not require any parts to remedy."  So instead of purchasing the thermocouples, I chatted with the Sure Marine Service technician on the phone and he suggested looking at the gas valves.

This diagram shows the gas manifold running across the top and supplying gas to the two values on the right.  Attached to each valve is a gas supply line for the burner, and a thermocouple.

I shutoff all the gas and disconnected the electricity going to the stove before I pulled it out of the motorhome.  In the photo below you can see all the elements described above.

Gas valves are on the right.

The Princess 2273 stove has a couple of design flaws.  The first is that the right side burner can easily redirect the flame or heat from the burner onto the knobs.  This shortens the life of the knobs, including sometimes melting them.  The second flaw is that anything spilled on the cover plate for the knobs makes its way into the stove and runs over the gas valves.

In this closeup of the gas valves, you can see evidence of previous spills that have made their way to areas that could introduce contaminates into the valves.

Following the advice from Sure Marine Service, I removed each of the valves and then separated the valve side from the solenoid side.

As soon as I removed the thermocouple from one end of the solenoid side, the problem was obvious.  A coating of shellac from previous cooking spills had made its way into the solenoid side of the valve and gummed up the works.

Looking from the thermocouple end of the solenoid side of the gas valve.

In the photo of the solenoid, you can see the copper wire coils that energize with electricity from the thermocouple and draw in the plunger, normally extended by the spring to shutoff the gas.

Solenoid that has to retract the spring in order to keep the gas flowing.

In the following photo, everything has been cleaned and is ready for reassembly.  The plunger pointing up on the left is depressed by a washer under the knob.  The motion is redirected ninety degrees in order to push the solenoid so the the right end in the photo makes contact with the thermocouple.  Electricity from the thermocouple energizes the solenoid so it can retract the plunger while overcoming the force of the spring.  This allows gas to continue to flow to the burner when you stop depressing the knob.

Ready for installation.

 The stove has been restored to full operation.  We still think we have to press too hard to get it to energize the solenoid, but at least it stays lit dependably now.

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