Atwood water heater

uwe · 07-01-2002, 10:32 AM

My trailer has an Atwood water heater with the manual pilot, and the ITT control valve/pilot/burner assembly.
The pilot will light, the burner will come on, the water heats quite well, and then it goes off and stays off. The pilot will not stay on once the water is hot and the burner shuts off.
Any clues what this could be? I will remove the pilot assembly again and try and clean it, but i am assuming that if the pilot will light up initially, then it might not be the problem?????
My seriver amnuals do not refer to this specific problem. Any ideas would be appreciated, like always.
Uwe

CPRcubed · 07-02-2002, 12:32 PM

Have you got the original "pancake" style pilot? It looks like 2 parallel disks, just slightly separated. They can corrode and get clogged up between the disks. Mine did the same thing (and was actually a pain to to get to stay lit), so I retrofitted a newer style to mine (hard to describe, but it looks like a notched tube with the tip bent a little at the notch). It didn't require too much modification to get it to fit and has worked well so far. Cheers!

uwe · 07-02-2002, 10:09 PM

I found out that the water heater is a very old unit, and that the original pilot parts are no longer available, meaning it needs new control valve and pilot/burner assembly. So I am going to simply replace the entire thing, as this only costs a few dollars more than all the parts.
RVparts in Sunnyvale has a replacement for $ 229.00 plus shipping. Worth it in my book......
It did have the pancake style pilot, on the left side of the burner.
Happy 4th of July to all!
Uwe

Inland RV Center, In · 07-03-2002, 08:51 AM

Make sure that they send it with a "silver door", as the old door won't fit correctly. Andy

CPRcubed · 07-03-2002, 12:53 PM

I found out that the pilot assembly was not available also. That is why I put the one I did on there. The tank and main burner were fine and the pilot assembly was realtively cheap. Cheers!