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Thought those cheap gas range igniters were fine but just had one fail after 3 months
Installed a no-name brand igniter from Amazon in March for a customer in Phoenix. It already stopped sparking last week, leaving their oven dead. Anyone else seen these knockoff parts die way too fast?
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ross.lily1mo ago
I actually read somewhere that the main issue with those cheap igniters is the gas flow and spark gap tolerances are way wider than OEM specs, so they don't mate up right with the burner ports half the time. Heard a tech on a forum say the ceramic cracking is common too because they use a lower-grade material that can't handle the heat cycling from Phoenix summers. I've seen three friends swap those out in the last year and every single one died within six months.
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gibson.morgan1mo ago
Got a similar story. Picked up a "universal" igniter off eBay to fix my mom's stove last winter, thought I was saving a few bucks. Thing worked fine for maybe two months, then it just stopped making any spark at all. Opened it up and found the ceramic cracked right down the middle where it connects to the wire. Ended up having to order the OEM part anyway, cost double what the cheap one did but at least it's still clicking away six months later.
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Gibson.morgan, I gotta push back a little here. That cracked ceramic could've been from overtightening or maybe a bad install, not just the part being cheap. I've used no-name igniters in a pinch and had them last years, especially if you handle them gently and don't crank down on the nut. The OEM markup is real, but a lot of it is just branding and markup. Not saying yours didn't fail, just that I've had the opposite luck more often than not.
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