Fixing the Force 10 Stove

   Just a heads up out there for those club members looking to buy a nice little boat of their own...well, you have to get your prospective boat surveyed. Apparently it's like when you buy a house and have it inspected (don't really know, haven't ever bought a house...mainly because they cost a quarter to a half a million bucks here in Seattle!).
   When you have the survey done, probably by someone who can barely use that new crazy email (boat folks like to talk on the phone), they'll seem pretty busy most of the day. It's kinda like when you get an overpriced haircut and they go slower 'cause you're spending so much. Anyway, for all of the money you will be paying them, they won't check half of the stuff on your boat. Sails? Probably not. Engine? Nope. Force 10 indoor stove/oven? Negative.
   We had tried to get our indoor stove going before, but we couldn't re-light the thing after a few minutes of use. We consulted the manual which instructed us to take the whole thing out of the boat, take some stuff apart, and check on a few things.

The stove came out and apart easy enough (just lift). A few screws here, pull on this, don't drop stuff in the water...no problem. We noticed (in the pic below) that one of the wires from the starter had mysteriously fallen apart...ok, just kidding, a mouse did it...before we took the boat over, however...

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  We thought maybe some of the parts in the stove switches might have been bad or need a little grease so we took them in to the stove fixer guy in town (Sure Marine)...he said it looked fine and the stove was probably in great shape. He also said he had never heard of our problem - a stove that starts and then won't re-light. So...

We took apart our Trident Marine gas switchy thingy, it seemed fine, and followed the wires out of it back to where our propane tank is stored (see below). After talking with Dan from Trident Marine, who was super-super nice, thought we should leave everything as is, try and cook a meal, and if the gas eventually runs out during the cooking, he knows what is wrong. The wires from our gas switchy thingy head back to a solenoid (what we have the wrench on in the pic below). The power coming from the wires opens the solenoid and allows gas to flow (more or less).  It is sort of a safety thing. Dan said if the gas shuts off during cooking than that is the problem - we need a new solenoid. 

Welp, Dan was right. We went over to fisheries supply and picked up an almost identical replacement part (for $100). Brought it back, put it on, put some soap around all of the propane connections (big bubbles mean there is a leak), and pow, it works fine. One indication of the problem was probably the oily fluid that came our of the hose when we took off the old solenoid. All and all, not too hard of a fix. I'm glad we have a pretty easy system (most boats with a propane stove probably have exactly the same set up). I learned how to completely disassemble and reassemble the stove and we didn't even end up with more parts than we started with! Also, in the pack with the new solenoid was instructions on how to clean the thing, which, I possibly could have done in the first place and if it wasn't really broken, not bought the new part (of course).
   ~Paul, Ann, Amber, Jon   ETC

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