On Jan 26, 8:27*pm, finiteguy wrote:
On Jan 26, 8:48*am, George wrote:



On 1/26/2012 12:27 AM, hr(bob) wrote:

On Jan 25, 10:45 pm, *wrote:
I repaced my heating system 4 years ago with an oil fired Weil Mclean
system. The burner is a Beckett. Occasionally theboiler fires up and
then shuts down a few seconds later. The service guy claimed that it
was a bad transformer. I don't think he knws what the real problem is.
These guys are butchers. They change parts and charge a lot of money
and they are not sure what the probelm is. They dont know how to test
the parts to see if they are defective.
Anyone have aclue about what the problem could be?

Do you have a voltmeter? *If so, just monitor the output voltage from
the transformer when things are normal, leave it hooked up, and at the
next failure check the voltmeter to see if it is still putting out the
same voltage. *This is basic, if you don't understand then find a
helpful handy neighbor.

Likely most home meters cannot handle the typical 10 kV output from an
oil burner ignition transformer.

So, I should unbolt the transformer,tilt it back, turn on the burner
and measure the voltage? The burner will be pumpin goil into the fire
box with no ignition. This won't cause a problem? I think my voltmeter
does measure 10 Kv but I dont want to get zapped.

no!
don't try to measure the 10kV!

this is a very bad idea because

1) the voltage is too high for you to safely measure
2) the oil will be pumping

what you want to see is , does the fire actually start for the few
seconds before it shuts off..

that will tell you if it is an ignition problem or a flame sense
problem

then we can go from there.


Mark