We recently called Sears repair because the porcelain insulator around the electronic ignitor on the right front burner of our Kenmore gas range cracked. The repairman who responded was very polite and knowledgeable. He informed me that Sears does not stock the ignitor itself requiring a replacement of the entire ignitor/ orifice assembly, a much more expensive option. As a prelude to the actual replacement, which required ordering the part, the repairman proceeded to check the eleven screws that hold the five burner assemblies to the top plate of the range---all of which must be removed to gain access to the burner assemblies. He informed me that since this plate is normally cleaned very often by the home owner, the water use leads to corrosion of these screws and very often they are difficult to remove and, in some cases, the screw snaps off in the process. As predicted, when very carefully attempting to remove the two screws for the left front burner BOTH screws sheared off. Apparently, the standard solution to this problem is to order another ingnitor/orifice for the second burner, a cost that is borne by the owner.

The screws involved are 6-32 X 3/8” long, hex head galvanized steel with a standard washer. I can understand that attempting to extract these broken screws or drilling out the broken screws and re-tapping the holes for a larger diameter screw is too time consuming and expensive for your repairmen. However, the use of a standard steel screw (even with galvanizing) in a wet condition is a very poor design and charging the customer $4.05 plus $0.31 tax for five screws that cost $0.11 each at the local hardware store makes the situation even more ridiculous. I purchased a box of 100 stainless screws of the same size for the same money and along with stainless steel #4 washers, requested this substitution when the new parts were installed this week. I don’t believe these stronger stainless screws will snap off the next time the same repair is required.

More importantly, I examined the two orifice/ ignitor assemblies removed from our range and to my surprise, found the ignitor was attached to the assembly either by a single Phillips head screw or by a spring steel clip, meaning that the broken part could have been EASILY removed and replaced. Why aren’t these less expensive, easily replaced ignitors available in lieu of the MUCH MORE expensive entire assembly? Unless there is a valid reason, the customer is led to believe that Sears is merely bilking their customers $56 (or more) for the assembly vs. a much cheaper ingnitor replacement.