If the insulators are oil fouled they can semi-short and overload the igmition transformer. Too wide gap can also overload the transformer and stress the insulators. The insulators can sometimes be cleaned by removing them, placing them on a clay tile, and heating them with a propane torch until the oil/carbon all burns off. Only do this if you have spares in case you damage them trying to clean them.
Quite often wiping the soot off of the flame sensor fixes the problem
- soot on the cell means it doesn't get enough light from the flame to tell the relay the fire is lit.
Sounded good, but I remember now that one of the two mornings I woke up cold, I reset the furnace and it ran, about 40 seconds with no fire, until it tripped again. The transformer must have been plenty cold at that time. Yet I think it worked later that day. Tomorrow I'll measure the resistance of the old one. Then maybe I'll warm it up on top of the oven while I make a pie, and see if that changes anything.
IF the observation door is open and I'm standing right there, should I be able to hear the sound of the electric arc? 1/8 inch in one case, a little more with the other setup?
But it ran 10 minutes ago, running for 24 hours now since I changed the transformer.
Sounds right.
Quit throwing things at it. Yes, you should hear the "arc".
Regardless: Isolate the problem. If you do not know how to do this, find someone who can.
If you really want to know how to do this, it *will* put your ass in harms way.
Just to fuddy duddy the situation:
My neighbor's truck is having an issue. It's a 1973 Found On Road Dead truck. Shift it to third and the engine dies. He and his son want to do "things" by "the well if" thought process, rather than the eliminate the obvious and go forward with what is really going on. Sort of like combating old wives tales, and still wanting to get some.
I know that sounds wrong, but...Stop!
Start over and observe. Be patient.
To tell it true: I am reticent to tell you how to find things out. Just because the system fails at one point does not mean that there is not something else going on. The stupidest things happen.
My regrets for not paying more attention to this thread. My past two days have been busy, and today has been rather chaotic.
Sounds like a candidate for an aux. muffin fan. I mount them on most anything that runs very like stereos, dvr's, large-capacity battery chargers or anything similar. It seems to have extended the life of a few pieces of equipment that before fan cooling experienced capacitor failures and other maladies on an all-too-regular basis.
If you know that your transformer overheats when running too long and that's happened more than once, it needs some sort of cooling mechanism - perhaps even the old heat sink from a PC CPU.
I'm not, really. I changed the nozzle, then changed the nozzle/electrode/holder combination. And since the second didn't help, that means it's something other than the nozzle/electrode. So I changed the transformer.
(I had a spare xformer from the burner a neighbor threw away. Originally I just wanted a spare latching relay, a 1" cube with a clear plastic cover, because mine gave me trouble and I was sure it was going to fail. Then I thought a whole control board would be good to have, but now I have a spare everything that's on the burner.
But I didn't even when there was no fire. Another reason to be suspicioius of the transformer.
That's what I've been doing. That's why I had problems for two days, but I've had heat for 4 days.
I rarely need anyone to come and do it. Sometimes I need advice. (But I fix many other things without even posting here.)
You've not obliged to read every thread, not even the threads you have advice on.
Not a bad idea.
Not a bad idea.
I don't have a feel for how much heat the CPU makes, or how much heat the fan or the heat sink would remove. Maybe if I hold my hand in the air stream from the CPU (this one has a shroud and all the air comes out one place) I'll get a feel.
But I've changed the transformer now so until this one starts giving the same problem, I'll probably not be able to test your idea.
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