Oven repairs (second attempt)

Things are going well. We've take the camper on many weekend trips. There are tons of beautiful places near Missoula to explore. Here's the toaster in the Bull River Valley recently.

We're down to three remaining issues, and they are proving a bit tough to solve.

They are: a wiring issue with the signal/brake lights (they won't work if the headlights are on), the oven, and the trailer brakes.  I'll leave the brake discussion for another time (it's been a long day), and put the wiring issue in a separate post.

Let's start with the oven.

The burners on the stove top work great. However we can't get the oven going.  Propane never seems to enter the oven. Today we took apart all the gas lines, blew them out, turned the propane on and off, while checking different points in the system, etc.  After a thorough investigation, it appears that the problem is either in the safety valve or the pilot mechanism.  Above you can see David warming up the sensor on the safety valve- if you do that, you can hear a CLICK and after that point you can blow through the supply line.  If there is no flame (ie the pilot light isn't lit) then no gas should be allowed through the valve.

The problem before that, then, is how to get the pilot light lit. Even after cleaning out everything possible, we can't get propane to come out of the pilot light assembly.  It may be easier to just replace this. Where can one get a 1966 Holiday Oven pilot light assembly? If you know, please tell us. I checked at vintagetrailersupply.com without success.

It could be the safety valve too. If it were possible to replace both, it would be very satisfying. We will continue looking for repair information and/or replacement parts.

It is also possible that we are missing a step in the basic process of trying to turn on the pilot light. The control knob does NOT have a setting for "pilot", and it is not possible to push the knob in (some ovens have that).  There is just an on/off switch for the main supply. 

If you have some ideas about this, please leave a comment, or even email me if you don't like commenting on blogs. marilynjmarler@gmail.com

We are perplexed.

UPDATE 9/10/13

David got the pilot light to work- it turns out that there is a little screw at the end of the assembly that opens or closes so you can adjust the flame size. It was completely shut, and hence no propane was coming out.  

The heater pilot also works. However the burners still don't come on.  So the remaining possibilities are 

*broken thermostat

*broken sensor on the safety valve

*broken safety valve in general

We did find some replacement safety valves on eBay but they are $80.  We may end up getting one just to rule it out... and who knows, maybe to just start hoarding replacement parts! I called a local RV service shop and they said it would be extremely hard to get any parts for a '66 Holiday Oven for a camper.

UPDATED UPDATE 9/10/13

David fixed it. The problem was that the heater pilot was coming on, but not burning high enough to touch the thermocouple (sensor) on the security valve.

So... the solution was simply to adjust the heater pilot. And the control for that is hidden behind this knob...

Voila. That's the adjuster, between 12 and 1 o'clock. Clearly labelled "HTR".

If we'd had an owner's manual the whole repair would have taken mere moments! 

Step 1, open pilot valve at the tip, and 

Step 2, adjust the heater pilot flame with the super secret lever.

I hope this helps someone else with their classic camper oven!

Let's bake some muffins!