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René has always had a hard time lighting the pilot for our Maytag RV oven. I never had a problem, so I always gave her a hard time in return.

Then one day I couldn’t get it to light.

After far too many times of kneeling before the Magic Chef, praying that it would light, we decided to call for service since it was still under warranty. But not before I dissected and reassembled the pilot assembly and combed the owner’s manual for assistance. There was none.

The range top has an ignition switch that works like a charm, every time. Knock on wood. But to light the oven, you must hold in the dial while holding a lighter under the pilot for a minute, or two. Or three or four in our case. After waiting about five minutes one time we finally gave up and called a local Maytag repair shop when camped out at Lake Manatee State Park.

René did her usual RV issue research and discovered that this troublesome RV range is known for having problems with the thermocouple. This made sense to me since it would glow good and hot but refuse to allow the pilot to remain lit. The manual indicated that the oven had “no user serviceable parts” but that didn’t stop me from giving it a try.

FYI: Search for “RV” or “Magic Chef” on the Maytag website and you will get no results.

I did not feel very confident about the repairman that finally showed up when I noticed he had no idea how to light an RV oven. Hell, he had a hard time lighting our lighter! So he went out to his truck to get his own. It was exactly the same.

I tried to explain the problem, but he insisted on just slamming the knob around and grunting.

Finally I watched him adjust a tiny little screw near the thermostat dial. I obviously overlooked this or thought it was strictly structural. Like I said, the manual was no help! It is a gas adjustment for the pilot. Once turned up, it worked. Though Iwouldn’t quite say like a charm.

We have indeed been able to light our oven since adjusting the pilot. Well, at least I have. But I have also needed to readjust the pilot a couple times. If Maytag only would have mentioned the adjustment in the manual, or put someone on the phone to offer support, we could have been baking fries for our burgers long ago. And they could have saved the cost of a warranty service call.

The topper was how the repairman insisted on a copy of our sales receipt as proof of purchase for the warranty. We don’t exactly have a copier in our rig. After explaining I could take a picture of our only copy and email a PDF to somebody, I finally got an email address out of the man. But only after he called his office to get it, and proudly told me how he had recently emailed a photograph to his son.

If you have trouble getting your Magic Chef oven to remain lit, and you probably will someday, try this before calling an inept repairman:

• Disassemble and clean out the pilot assembly. Be careful not to lose the one small part that falls out when you unscrew the nut!
• Adjust the tiny screw on the front of the thermostat assembly behind the knob. Loosen it to increase the pilot flame size.
• If you must call a repairman and are still under warranty, swing by Office Depot or somewhere and make a copy of your sale receipt first.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 11:40 pm and is filed under RV Tech, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.