First a story, then questions. (Images below)
Once upon a time my friend had a gas furnace that would shut down on its own, sometimes after a few hours and sometimes after a few minutes. I did some research, then opened her up (the furnace, not the friend) and removed and cleaned the burners, igniter, and flame sensor.
Before buttoning her up, I sat there and watched the furnace go through its paces. Everything looked great until I spotted a wire laying on the burner box top. Its pool of brown melting/melted plastic insulation was turned black.
To me, this looked like an accident in progress, and about to get worse, so I lifted the wire and held it up off of the now heating hot burner box top with a socket driver in my left hand, and the tip of my knife in my right.
With both hands occupied, and unable to abandon my post, I wondered how I was going to get the furnace turned off. At that moment, with a great luck my friend appeared and I said, “Would you please turn it off?”
With the furnace off, now I could relax and take a closer look. I keep repeating my mantra: “I am not a furnace repair man,” yet I have eyes and a brain...so I contemplated what sat before me and noticed some things.
One of the wires going to the left rollout switch (not the melted one) had been tied into a loop thus “shortening” the wire. I saw that it was not in contact with the burner box top like my melting one was. So, I tied a loop in my melted wire.
Inspecting the bundle of wires that my melted wire led to, I noticed that the way the bundle was clipped to the side of the box, there was so much slack that many of the other wires were touching, or very close to the burner box top. So, I opened the clip, moved the wire bundle up a ways to remove the slack, and clipped them back.
It’s my uneducated belief that the insulation on the rollout switch wire is there to prevent its shorting out on anything, and that as long as the copper is healthy, the wire will perform its wire functions just fine.
I then noticed a little metal plate near or maybe partially covering an opening in the burner box top next to the igniter...I wondered about functions involved here... and what the proper configuration is supposed to be... hmmm
QUESTIONS
(1) What would happen if a rollout switch wire was resting atop the burner box top once it gets hot and potentially shorts-out the rollout switch wire?
(2) Could this have been the root cause of the problem all along?
(3) Is a little wrap of electrical tape enough of a band-aid for the wire’s melted insulation, or is more a more drastic (complicated) remedy (like splicing or replacing the wire) required?
(4) Now that the wire is looped and suspended nicely, does it even need any tape at all?
(5) What needs to happen with the opening in the burner box top? Move the little loose metal plate off and leave it open? Should it be covered? Does it need to be secured in some way? Discarded?
(6) What else should I ask here that I don’t know to ask about?
Thanks in advance,
drcarl
drcarl attached the following image(s):
