Viking Stove Repair

Turn on the oven of a Viking all-gas stove and watch through the window. If the igniter glows orange for a minute or more with no flame, you have found the brand's most familiar fault. The hot-surface glow-bar does more than heat up; the current it draws is what opens the oven's safety valve. As it ages it still glows but draws too little, so the oven lights late or never.

These are freestanding pro stoves in 30, 36 and 48-inch widths, from the older Professional series to the current 5 Series and 7 Series. Up top are heavy sealed burners with spark ignition under cast grates. In the oven, a gas bake burner sits below, and many models add a Gourmet-Glo infrared broiler at the top with its own igniter. Older ovens use a mechanical thermostat; newer ones, a sensor and electronic control.

On the surface, clicking without a flame usually means an igniter is wet or cracked, often from a boil-over or a grate set down hard. If nothing sparks anywhere, the spark module is the likely culprit. The infrared broiler is a separate system, so a stove that bakes normally but will not broil points to the broiler's igniter or valve rather than anything on the bake side.

Older stoves drift as the mechanical thermostat ages, so bakes come out hot or cold even though everything lights. The heavy oven doors also sag on their hinges and leak heat around the top. You can dry and reseat burner caps yourself, but leave the valves, regulator and orifices alone. If you smell gas, get out of the house first and phone the utility from outside.

We measure the bake and broil igniters' current draw, test the safety valves, check calibration against a probe, and inspect the spark module, surface igniters, hinges and door gasket. Igniters, thermostats, modules and hinges are routine parts, and the cast burners and heavy cabinet outlast them by many years, so on a Viking stove repair is almost always the better value.