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I have a whirlpool gas range bought from Costco 4 years ago (WEG745H0FS). Of late, one burner does not light up even though the sparks appear on the burner. If I blow air on the burner, the flame does light up (meaning the igniter does produce sparks that would ignite the flame if enough gas came to it).

I have tried to clean the burner and grates immensely. I have also tried the brush the igniter with a brass brush. I have also taken a wire and tried to clean the hole from which gas comes out. None of these have resolved the issue for me.

Any idea what I can do?

Photo of burner: enter image description here

FreeMan
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Captain Jack sparrow
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2 Answers2

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If it's sparking but not lighting & works if you blow it [& presumably if you were to light it with a match] then the spark is probably jumping the wrong way.

If that's your own metal foil & not integral, first thing would be to get rid of it, or at least get it out of the way of the igniter.
Secondly [this always works on mine] put the burner cap back on then pressing down with not too much force, scrub it back & forth - a twisting motion - to scrub the underside against the base, removing any residue or rust.

It took me quite some time to realise that the spark isn't meant to jump to the main body of the burner as we can see it in your image, but upwards to the cap… right through the gas-flow.

Tetsujin
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I see from the photo that the spark point insulator is coated with burnt-on carbon. This is a conductor, and the spark is jumping sideways from the carbon to the body of the burner, instead of straight up to the cap.

Scour the black coating from the spark point until you see only shiny1 white insulator.

Also make sure that the cap, burner, and any other conducting metal parts are shiny-clean where they touch each other.

  1. It's okay if it becomes a little less than factory-shiny from your scouring.
A. I. Breveleri
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