I need to find out how to get access to the burner ignitors on a Frigidaire Gallery gas stove. This should be simple. I tried lifting the top but it won't budge. I tried prying between the top and the main body with no luck. Do the screws (4 ea. burner) attaching the burners to the top have to be removed? I started doing this but the hex heads were snapping off. At this point I stopped rather than break them all.

The ignitors are mounted on a small tab which is attached to the bottom of the burner with a small (#4-40?) screw. In order to get to the bottom of the burner the cooktop must be raised. In order to fully raise the cooktop all three small screws (#4-40) must be removed from all four burners. This is where the fun (and cursing) starts. These screws are not stainless and are usually corroded and seized due to the heat they see. The heads readily snapped off of all the screws I tried to remove. At this point the only way to fully raise the cooktop would have been to drill out all the screws. I tried but this is just about impossible to do accurately due to the small screw size. If you can't drill out the screws you would then have to replace the burners, which makes just replacing a single ignitor a ridiculous expense. I pried the cooktop up a few inches by inserting a wood wedge between the front lower edge of the cooktop and the stove. There are two clips underneath the cooktop which snap into the body of the stove. You can see these clips by shining a flashlight in the small space between the cooktop and the stove. The burners are hard-piped but there are a few S-curves in the tubing that allow just enough flex to raise the cooktop 4-6 inches. Once you have access to the ignitor screws you will discover that these snap off just as the burner screws did. The problem at this point is how to secure the new ignitor in place. I solved this by using a snap ring that fits tightly around the ceramic body of the ignitor. From the bottom, insert the ignitor into the hole in the burner until it bottoms out, then expand the snap ring with a pair of snap ring pliers and place the snap ring on the ignitor so that it is flush with the cooktop. This worked for me and I have had no problems with this arrangement since I replaced it in 3/10. If you need to replace more than one ignitor, and you intend on keeping the stove, it may be easier to replace all the burners and ignitors with new units. To me, this expense seems unwarranted for just one ignitor. Might as well just buy a whole new stove. In any case, the engineering of these attachments is very poor indeed: breakage prone #4-40 non-stainless screws in a high heat corrosive environment!