[sammons]

I've grown to hate anything with a computer chip! Four years ago my old style NG water heater for the house rusted thru tank at the top after 15yrs. Never a problem up till then, about the only thing that ever went wrong with older units was just an $8 Thermocoupler. When i built the house (2002-2003) I bought a matched pair of Reliance 40 gal water heaters, one for the house and one for the infloor heat in the garage, it's still working. Bought them at a lumber yard that was moving out older inventory. I give $150 for the pair.

Back to four years ago, priced new water heaters....$700 up each. Didn't have that much money, my buddy Tom bought me the new one. Called on warranty, nope. Not installed by a Reliance dealer or licenced authorized plumber😡  Been without hot water 10 days now, cold showers suck! No pilot lite, ran thru all i could to diagnose, Tom picked me up a Thermo coupler. Nope this has a computer control board, and takes a Thermopile instead.

Found Thermopile assy on Amazon and found control board on e'bay. Had Tom order, 2 days later he was notified they were out of control boards😡 I got the Thermopile assy friday evening. Installed saturday, pilot still won't stay on, must be the control board which was cancelled. Looked all morning none anywhere now, was 4 or 5 last week.

Got to thinking.....the tank doesn't know whats firing it...right? I saved the gas control valve and all the burner assembly from my old unit (as the infloor heat is a twin) I think i'm going to put the old style gas control and thermo coupler in the new tank.

Seems any new fangled stuff i have with a computer board gives me fits that shouldn't. Safety cut offs on top of each other. New mowers have a dozen safety cut offs you have to by pass to mow on a hill or mow backing up etc. Just venting on progress. I still say i was born 30-40yrs too late😁

Any body have thoughts on why that wouldn't work? 🤔
Both old/new are Reliance 40 gal, old was 35,000 BTU and new is 35,500 BTU. Holiday weekend, i'm not going to anything else soon.

[sixball]

Give it a shot. It will all be controlled from Washington soon enough. They're drinking sewer water in Texas and getting the AC turned off in Colorado. You can't plug in your electric car in California or even own a garden hose in parts if England. I'm sure this winter heating our homes & water will make us terrorists. Anything with a computer can be controlled from somewhere else. We should all be looking for fixable old stuff. If you can fix it with old parts good on you!

[sammons]

All part of the new green deal🙄 I can't believe some people give their rights away for "more security", or for a little cheaper elect/ gas rate when they then get  their thermostat remotely raised or lowered😖

Well at 9:30 lastnight I got my long hot shower😁 Talked to my plumber friend about the water heater, he didn't see any problem with swapping out controlers. So saturday night i dug up all the old stuff and cleaned it up. Took the thermoplile assy and removed the old thermopile and piszo ingnighter out. Formed a plan for installing thermo coupler in its place if i used new burner assy.
Sunday morning i had everything ready and rolled up my seat to start gutting. Unhooked main gas tube, then grabbed the wrench for the thermopile/pilot tube. Dropped the wrench twice, bent over to grab it and my hand was on the tube....it came out🤯 Took the "new fangled "breakaway ferrule nut" off.. it broke away but the ferrule failed to compress propper to the tube, in fact barely scratched it.

Brain balked at me with questions, could that have created low pressure to keep on and would that be a fault in maybe the ground for the millivoltage? Couldn't leave it that way without trying. Changed tube with the original put everything back together, lit pilot and it stayed on. Control board blinked code 1, all good with pilot. Turned knob to burner and nothing, but now blinking code 2. Looked that up, low voltage, replace thermopile. Arrrggg😡  looked in deeper on code 2, look for loose connections.
I knew all in the burner assy was tripple checked before i installed it. Which put me back to control board. What the heck, pulled control board to put eyes on, not that i know what to look for exactly. Looked for burnt spots and loose connections. Bingo! At the lower outside corner is the 2 male spade terminals that the thermopile and safety cutoff plug into. Cold solder joint and was loose. Soldered her up, put all back together and it fired off😊 So, an accidental grab by chance found part of the problem, (till next time).
Guess i didn't waste $50 in parts for the hell of it.
I'd never run across this breakaway ferrule thing before, it was supplied in the thermopile kit. Made of real quality Chinesium brass i'm sure. I wouldn't ever use one again.

[chopper526]

A happy ending and a hot shower!!

[sixball]

Good job, you are THE man! Do you know how few people out of 300,000,000 + could have done that? People who can fix their own stuff are rare. Even "techs" just replace components.

[62131]

There's gratification in fixing something. Most people just replace it or have someone else doit,

[sixball]

My father was the most mechanically proficient person I have ever known. He was also, to a point, the most peaceful person I have ever known. My single goal in life was to be like him when I grew up. He was a farmer, rancher, mechanic, journeyman machinist, well driller, a shop foreman at Douglas Aircraft, an inventor, an alcoholic, and the best dad a kid could have. The alcoholic trait is the only one I've come close to achieving.

Once when he was running a shop at a grain elevator at Ralph's/Ogg Switch between Canyon & Happy Texas a pair of old farmer brothers were hauling their wheat to the elevator in a teens/early twenties chain drive Oldsmobile truck. After having a hard time getting a load from their farm they stoped by the shop to see if my dad could repair the drive gears & chain on one side of the rear end. After a lot of discussion about the truck, the lack of machine tools in the shop and a couple of unflattering comments of their perceptions of my dad's abilities one of the brothers said, Do you really think you can fix it? It was like a bolt of lightning struck him. My dad turned to go back into he shop and back to what he was working on before they had interrupted. He said in a tone I had never heard before & in a way to let it be known the conversation was over, "If someone can design and build that piece of shi#! surely to God I can fix it." It took most of a week and as far as I know it was still running when the old guys quit farming. That is the shop where Dad & I rebuilt my Cushman sometimes using a lathe he built from a brake lathe and a piece of railroad rail.  admire folks who FIX stuff! Thanks Sammons!

[sammons]

Thanks for the kind words Sixball. I've always tried repairing my own stuff. I'm sure you and a lot of hands on cars guy's do the same. I always figured that if the repair man charged more than i was making....i'd try myself. Now days i have time but no money. Takes me forever, 10 minutes on 45 mins off these days.

Both sides of my family started out farming/ranching. They had to repair their equipment the most economical way. Both grandads moved on to otherthings both were very good at mechanics. Moms dad went to collage and got a mechanical enginering degree. Worked for Mayrath, then Chevy garage as a mechanic then back to engineering for WW cattle shut co. Spent a lot of time with him, my other had moved to California.

Mechanics use to repair your components, generator/ alternator bushings/bearings, brushes. Same with starters and waterpump seals. Rebuild master cylinders and wheel seals etc. Sometime in the 70s everyone seemed to just go to the parts house and get rebuilt units. Pretty soon it bacame hard to find a lot of repair parts.  Now mechanics just start throwing parts at it till they stumble on to the fix.🙄

[sixball]

You are right. When I retired from teaching I got a part time job at CarQuest. It was a small store and there was still a lot of farming/ranching here. the store stocked brushes, bushings, points, rectifiers......all sorts of stuff to fix things. By the time I left a few years later mom of it was gone. I took a lot of the old books with me. A lot is still out there it's just tough to find a counter person who will look for it.

[62131]

We have all the modern parts stores here Auto Zone, Orielly's, etc. but there's one locally owned parts house that you can go in there and say I need a sbc chevy fuel pump he walks back and brings it out, hardly ever uses a computer to look up a part, might use a book, And the part is correct