Propane weenie here... how do you light the oven pilot?

[Stella]

Sorry to be such a wimp, but I am a little skeered to light the oven pilot.

Does anyone have photos of the place to light it, or explicit instructions for the faint of heart?

Stella (obviously) has the 1960s Magic Chef yellow version...

After reading the "Does anyone use their oven" thread and getting the joneses for lasagnae, my tummy thanks you!

Jo

P.S. This may already exist, but I just couldn't find it on the forums.

[AirsDream]

That's a good question. On mine (but which is newer than yours by a bit), I just turn the burner on to the "pilot" setting and then get down and wave a lit "propane match" around in the burner area. Sooner or later (and it seems to take a minute or so as the air works its way out of the gas line), there's a tiny little pilot light that lights.

Then when I turn the oven control knob up from the "pilot" setting to a cooking temperature, it takes another minute or two before the mainn burner will come on. It seems that there's some sort of safety interlock that I don't know how it works ... but it seems to work fine.

Obviously, if you smell a strong gas odor, something's wrong. But otherwise, I bet it works fine for you.

[kingfisher24]

that is the way i do it...sometimes it takes longer than others and then sometime you have to hold your mouth just right

[az-lh]

I went through the same thing on our 2006 Safari. I finally found out that (at least on our model) that you had to:

• Turn the knob to Pilot
• push the knob in and hold it in while you...
• apply a flame to the place to light it

It takes about 30 seconds for the pilot to catch - I think there is a heat sensor or something like that so that if the pilot goes out it automatically cuts off the propane supply.

Your older model may have a different procedure, but I just thought I'd toss out these in case it helps.

[ridinatlast]

We are having the same issue, Stella. You are not alone - we are newbies, too. I can light the burners just fine but can't seem to light pilot as I figured there was a special "place" to light the pilot but can't locate it.

So you just light the pilot by lighting the burner?

[Stefrobrts]

In my oven if you get down on the ground and look up under the bottom shelf, you can see the burner assembly. Looking with a flashlight you should be able to spot the pilot light location. In mine it's way in the back.

To start with, light a burner just to make sure you've got gas back to the stove. Then turn that burner off.

Then turn the oven to pilot, and get your wand lighter out and light it, and stick it back in the area where you saw the pilot light stuff.

After a minute I can always hear the little 'woof' noise it makes when it is lit, and I'll pull out the lighter and look under there for the little pilot light burning. If it's not burning I'll get the lighter right back under there and try again.

Once it is lit, close the oven and turn it on. After a minute you should hear the noise of the burner turning on, then you can peek in there and see if the burner is lit.

It's a bit of a pain to light, but our oven works very good once you get it going. I cooked in it a bunch at the last rally. It's such a luxury when you're camping without hookups!

If all this doesn't work for you, you might want to have it inspected.

[bobfowler]

If it doesn't work (as in "needs parts") you may want to consider replacing your old Magic Chef with a new one. We did that with our '72 Argosy - we went from the 16" range to a 22" model. It required reworking the cabinets a bit, but the extra size oven is REAL nice...