Wagonmaster 6000B furnace

[Rick G]

Hi,

I got this request for information from Dave. I couldn't post pictures in a private message, so I am making this post so that I can put a couple of pictures on to assist, hopefully.

The question was:

Hi Rick,
I see you have worked on the 6000B furnace and am wondering if you could answer a question for me? Can I remove the firebox while furnace is in situ by removing the four corner nuts or will the chimney/vent stop it lifting off. The pilot light is unreliable and the thermo coupling seems too far away from it to receive constant heat. Sometimes working perfectly and sometimes not. Being an old unit I am sure it wouldn't be a bad idea anyway to check out the burner. I would appreciate any advice you may have. Thanks.

Dave.

My answer was:

Hi Dave,

It is a nice surprise that anyone else has that furnace, as it was hard to find any information about it (let alone another one) when I had one. The short answer is that you might be able to remove just the bottom floor of the furnace by disconnecting the gas lines and removing the four nuts that hold the floor on to the furnace box. I can’t see a way to include pictures, so I will make a post on the maintenance forum with your question and post them there. However, I took the whole thing out to make it easier to work with. It was not difficult, as there is a friction fit for the concentric air vents.

As for the problem you are having, it could easily be that that shield which directs the pilot light flame has been bent over time so that the pilot light no longer directs its flame over the thermocouple. I have also had this issue with a friend’s furnace (different make), which was corrected by (carefully) bending the shield to direct the flame better. If the pilot light is weak, look for a crimp in the gas line as well. It is also possible but less likely that the gas control is partly plugged for the pilot light gas line. The thermocouple could also be worn out, which can be easily corrected with a new standard thermocouple.

Later,
Rick

Here are a couple of pictures which show the furnace out of the trailer, and also how the bottom floor of the furnace attaches to the box by four bolts and (maybe) could be removed without taking the whole furnace out of the trailer.

Rick G

[Dave Leonard]

Hi Rick
We have tried to attach photos but were told they were too large and have no idea how to make them smaller.I tried again and it worked.There was a better photo but the camera malfunctioned. Note the thermocouple is behind the shield.
Dave.

[Rick G]

hi Dave,

Well, that is truly bizarre, I have not seen an arrangement like this before!! It would seem to be impossible for the pilot flame to reach the thermocouple when it is being directed away from it by the shield angle. I would not be at all surprised if this is the cause of your problem. On old Duotherm furnaces, the thermocouple is physically below the pilot flame, but the shield directs the flame down onto the thermocouple so it works OK.

What to do about it is another question. If your burner is like mine, and it appears to be when the pictures are compared, the assembly that holds the pilot gas line and the thermocouple is all one piece, although my vague recollection is that there may be a couple of screws underneath that would allow you to remove the shield separately from the gas line, or perhaps it would come loose when the gas line is loosened. You can remove the thermocouple easily by loosening the nuts around it, but I can’t remember if the shield portion will come out separately from its base.

In any case, the result you are looking for is that the pilot light flame should be directed forward and the thermocouple should be nearer the front of your furnace, so that you can actually light it from the port hole on the front of the furnace (which is at the lower left in the picture of the front of my furnace in my previous post). To accomplish that on your furnace, I would loosen or dismantle the shield/pilot light assembly and flip it 180 degrees so that the thermocouple is at the front of the assembly and the pilot flame gas line and shield are behind it. If you look at the picture of mine, you can see it on the right. On my furnace, I actually removed that whole assembly, turned it around and reassembled it so the pilot light was on the left of the burner, not on the right as in the picture. My pilot light portal on the furnace front was on the left, so this brought the pilot light much closer to where I had to insert the lighter to light it.

You will also need to have the shield direct the flame over the thermocouple, by removing it and turning it around if possible. If you can’t remove the shield separately and turn it, then you might have to try to bend it backwards over the thermocouple so that it directs the flame to the thermocouple. Bending the shield to be closer to the thermocouple worked for a friend’s furnace I was helping with last summer, but we only had to bend it a bit as it was already facing the correct way. I would be concerned about breaking it off by bending it too much. On the other hand, it does no good at all angled the wrong way it is now.

Please let me know how it turns out, I am interested in how it came to be this way and whether you can fix it. Have fun.

Rick G.

[pbraunton]

I have this furnace too, ....bought it last year off someone on here, ......

so all this info is good for me, ......It works fine now, but in case of a malfunction......

[Darwin Maring]

Had one years ago and the problem I had was a critter weaved a web at the pilot lite. Once I removed the web it worked OK.