Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Need help with a Carrier 58GA

I had been having problems with the Pilot lighting the burners and then go out. Heater would keep lighting itself and then go out until it would finally stay on for a while. Switched to a Programmable Thermostat. Stat seems to kick on, but the pilot will try to light the furnace a couple of times and then just do nothing. Pilot is still lit. Starting to get cold. Need any help I can get.:wall:

Not sure how your specific furnace works without seeing it or researching - but generally pilot operated furnaces require the pilot flame be sufficient, not have orifice at the end by the flame plugged up, that either a flame sensor or the entire pilot assembly itself records some kind of milliamp reading of current at the control board, so that the board can 'tell' the gas valve to open and fire up the main burners.

If you hear nor feel any clicking of the gas valve (if you place your finger tips on the gas valve, and there is no click after the pilot has been on for a number of seconds), then I'd suspect something wrong in any of those issues I mentioned.

If you have a flame sensor rod next to the pilot where you see this lone skinny electrical wire going into the burner area by the pilot, then that would be the flame sensor, and you first need to see if the pilot flame is touching the flame sensor good. (But on some units it's hard to see that, but remember you can use a small dental or other mirror to aid you.)

If the flame -IS- touching the flame sensor good, then you need to remove it and polish clean the probe with fine steel wool, scotchbrite pad, etc.

And if you have a paltry pilot flame, that either is not touching the flame sensor, or even if you do not have one, you need to make more pilot flame, and probably the orifice inside the tip of the pilot tube down at the flame end is probably closed shut some and needs to be cleaned. These orifice holes are extremely teeny and are designed this way and you do not want to enlarge the size; just clean out whats blocking it. You shoud be able to hold the orifice up to your basement light and see a small tiny perfectly round hole of light if good. Needles and pins are usually too fat to ream out the hole, but I've found that a wire plucked from a wire brush often does the trick if the hole is caked shut by stuff that air compressor blowing or other cleaning will not remove.

Is this an standing pilot? (Stays on all times)

If it's a standing pilot, and you have to relight it, the thermocouple maybe going bad on you..

The only time the Pilot light goes out is when the the burners try to lite and it sometimes blows the pilot out.

Then sounds like the pilot assembly needs to be taken out and cleaned.. DO NOT put anything in the pilot orifice that may make the hole size larger.

Well the furnace Magically came on in the middle of the night. I didn't do anything else to it. It still seems to run continuously. Why would it have waited more than 8 hours to finally start working?Am I going to be screwed for another 8 hours if the pilot goes out and I have to restart it. I know it's ancient, but no money to get anything else at this time. Is their a video anywhere that can show you step by step how to clean the furnace?

Does the pilot light go out when the blower comes on? Turn on the fan at the thermostat with no heat calling(turn of the heat). Post reply

. Why would it have waited more than 8 hours to finally start working?

It's 'on the bubble ' so to speak. Everything in life works that when when caught between fuctioning and not functioning.