[wordfool]

I read through various posts describing sparking issues with Viking ranges (they seem pretty common) but could not determine what might be my problem.

- All four ignitors spark continuously when even just one burner is lit.
- The spark from each ignitor seems to be grounding to the burner ring, not the flame.
- disconnecting one, two, or three ignitor cables does not solve the issue... the remaining connected ignitor keep sparking, regardless of which ring is on.
- disconnecting all four ignitor cables will cause one or all to try to ground to the nearest piece of oven steel when any burner is on. In other words, there is apparently no problem with the charge getting to the sparkers themselves but there's apparently some problem with the system acknowledging a ground.

Sounds to me like there's some issue with the control module, otherwise I would have been able to isolate the bad sparker. Does that sound right? I took the front panel off and all burner valves are clean and all wires seem in good condition. I also could see no evidence of cracking of any of the ceramic posts.

Any idea appreciated.

[wordfool]

I shuld also note that I just had the range installed in a new location so I also plan to check the ground and polarity of the outlet. However, the disconnected ignition wires sparking to the range frame suggests the frame is properly grounded.

[wordfool]

OK, this Viking ignitor issue had a happy ending... reverse polarity! Re-wired and the problem is now gone.

However, I do have a problem with one of the burners in that on High there is only intermittent flame from about a quarter of the burner ring. All the holes on the ring seem clear and fine... any ideas what might cause this issue?

[bruced]

I hit the same problem after a new ignitor was installed. The burners would light but the ignitors would keep sparking. The one clue was that if all the burners were lit then the sparking would stop.

The problem was that the burners were miswired to the ignitor. The electrical connections from the ignitor to the control knobs are labeled 1 to 4. The electrical connections from the ignitor to the burners are labeled 1 to 4. If these don't match then things don't work. That is, if the knob that controls the front-left burner is attached to terminal one, then the front-left burner had better be attached to terminal one.

The reason is simple. When you turn on the gas the ignitor sends sparks to all four burners, for safety reasons. But it also monitors to see if the *specified* burner is lit. Once it detects heat, it stops sparking. If it's monitoring the wrong burner then it won't detect heat. It was an easy fix once we figured this out.

After this we still had one burner that when lit wouldn't stop the sparking. That's because its wire was loose, so that's another possible cause. It's odd that it's wire had a good enough connection to drive the spark, but not a good enough connection to detect ignition.