Thetford cooker /oven issues

[Philpatton]

Hi all, we have an issue with our thetford oven were it won't light. There is spark, but no gas, therefore no ignition. The hob is ok, as is the grill and these light without issue.
If the grill didn't work, or if the hob didn't light I'd be satisfied that it was the gas, but as they do, I'm baffled.
It worked perfectly until last week.
Anyone have a clue as to what could be wrong.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Philpatton,
And welcome to the forum.

Obviously we can only speculate about the possible causes, and to be honest there are quite a few, but without being able to test my theories, I Could be quite wrong.

Most caravans have some gas appliance isolator valves usually in a cupboard or under the nearest bunk. Is it possible the one for the Oven has been turned off accidentally?

Its quite common for oven burners to become partially blocked by bits of food and grease from cooking, but also the construction of the burner makes it quite attractive to certain insects to climb in and obstruct the mixing of gas and air in the eh Venturi tube. This will affect ignition and would also cause the flame to be rather languid and yellow topped.

You should check your operator's instructions on how to clean the oven, and burner and if that doesn't help then you might be best contacting a caravan service centre or looking up a mobile engineer to cone and sort it out.

Installing, maintaining repairing and removing gas appliance should only be carried out by a fully gas competent person.

 

[Philpatton]

Hi,
So this weekend we were away and noticed that there was no power at all in the leisure battery. As the van had been parked up for 3weeks I thought it had simply gone flat. The follows day, I unplugged the hookup to find the battery was still flat.
This made me think about the oven, if the battery is flat( I think the charger must be shot) then would this cause the oven to stop functioning, even when the ehu is plugged in.

 

[Raywood]

The battery does not affect the cooker so that is not the problem. If the hob and grill light then I have to agree with the Prof and look at the possibility of tbe burner being blocked.

 

[brian_c]

Hello and welcome to the forum.
I know this isn't actually technical help but my oven won't light unless the glass top covering the hob is in the raised position.
So could yours be the same and could you have done like others including myself have done on occasions. (Tried with the lid down!)
Hope you get it sorted
Best wishes Brian.

 

[Hutch]

Yes like Brian C states. Lid down cuts off the gas to the oven and grill. Saftey measure. On our Coachman.

 

[dwilt]

We had problems with our thetford oven not staying lit and it was because the knob was pushed in too far onto the spindle. Just pulling the knob out 3-4 mm solved the problem.

 

[Grubber 12]

I know this is an old post but there may still be readers that are trying to diagnose faults. I had this on my Caravan a couple of years ago . It turned out to be one of the microswitches that detects when the glass lid is down. It was quite an easy fix. I had to spend £78 on a kit from Thetford (which included a full bank of microswitches and 3 thermocouples. But all I really needed was one microswitch. They now sell them on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134134470584