Reply To: GE 40g gas Powervent intermittantly fails to start requiring

[joaklay]

I called the 800 # on the hot water heater, talked to a tech support guy, told him the code and he overnighted me an ignitor assy, free of charge.

So today I opened it up and to my surprize, there was alot of rust particles all over the pilot and burner assy. I wouldn’t have suspected that in 1 yr of service and it’s likely that that rust in itsself was the problem but having the new part, I still went ahead and replaced it anyway.
I vacuumed up all the rust.
It now starts up without hearing the ignitor clicking excessively so I’m sure it’s fixed, at least until more rust re-appears.
Maybe that only happened initially? I’ll see.
Either way, it’s very easy to remove the burner assembly and clean it out.