Solid State Electronic Ignition

It appears the knurled “sparker wheel” in my lighter rod is worn out because in spite of replacing the flint, I never could get the thing to consistently spark. So most of the time I ended up snaking a propane match through all the wires & plumbing to light the pilot. This in itself would not be that big of a deal if it was something that only needed to be done once or twice on a given trip, but on long distance excursions, I prefer to turn the refrigerator off when we stop for either lunch or gas. Laying on the floor doing a Harry Houdini routine gets old quick.

My last home gas grill had a piezoelectric lighter which was better than nothing, but repeatedly pushing its spring-loaded button sure could wear out one’s thumb if the grill was not in the mood to light. Although home improvement stores sell replacement units, my preference was for a 9 volt battery-powered version similar to what came installed on my new home gas grill. This type of unit sparks three or four times a second when its button is pushed. A brief ‘net search turned up exactly what I was looking for. Here it is pictured along side my old lighter rod:

My kit was made by Sunbeam. The part number is 3728-0292, and the stock number is 50220. I bought it off Ebay from Seller bbqfunstuff for around $20 delivered.

The pushbutton is at the left of the picture, guts with battery installed is in the middle, and two igniter electrodes are partially concealed in the RH metal box. If you’re like me you’re thinking “Two? I’m only used to seeing one electrode”. Generating a spark requires a “+” wire, and a “-“ wire. Most manufacturers just tie one of those wires to chassis ground, and let the remaining electrode arc over to whatever part of the chassis is closest. For whatever reason, Sunbeam chose to have the spark arc across two electrodes.

The biggest challenge to this project was adapting the electrode box to mount in such a way that it would consistently light a single pilot light as opposed to a row of flames like a BBQ grill has. I also needed to avoid touching the refrigerator’s thermocouple.

My first effort, which consisted of removing one entire ‘big’ face & notching the two ‘small’ faces, can be seen above screwed through the slot formerly occupied by the lighter rod. Although this adaptation turned out exactly the way I wanted to, it basically didn’t work because the electrodes did not arc directly in the path of the gas. I had planned the electrode’s position that way because I did not want them in the direct flame, and I figured that, with LPG as explosive as it is, having the electrodes arc really close to the gas would be sufficient. Bad assumption. I went back and modified the metal box again, rotated it 90 degrees, and reinstalled it. Now it lights every time.

The red pushbutton was then mounted in an electrical box which was then screwed to the floor close to the gas controls. No more laying on the floor to light the fridge! J