Old vs New style burners on the Force 10 stoves - is it an "upgrade?"

[cadmus]

Love Force 10. Love um. Great employees and great products. Not saying a thing negative here.

I am rebuilding an old late 80s early 90s 2 burner propane stove oven.
The nice staff at Force 10 suggested I upgrade to the "new" style burners for the stove (one big, one little). Not that the old burners were broken, just that the entire thing is taken apart and old style burners and parts are no longer available.



The smaller of the old burners always felt too small for any pot. The new burners look to be an even smaller diameter than the old counterparts. Those of you who used both the old style and new style Force 10 burners, is it really an "upgrade" or should i stick with the old ones? Impressions?


New ones are aluminum rather than heavy bronze.
For some reason they said the oven has to be the old style burner, investigating.

[cadmus]

Maybe i should have put this in the "Provisioning: Food & Drink" section? Tried to delete, too late.

[JPA Cate]

I have one of the newer ones, with the aluminum burners. I don't really think they will be as long lasting as bronze*, which is of course, also more expensive. Why change before you are forced to. The aluminum ones are easy to cleanse of grease spatters by rubbing with a plain steel wool pad.

*Our Eno on our previous boat had bronze, and we found replacements for them, in New Caledonia a few years back.

[cadmus]

>"Why change before you are forced to."

Good point. The boat is a project boat. I never used this exact stove, per se. But used older Force 10s on previous boats. It is completely disassembled. Unsure if the burners worked. I said I wanted spares. I think Force10 advised it because parts for the old ones are unavailable and it is easier to replace now then when it is assembled. Also, the older Force10 stove models used a small stove burner in the oven. Since the new burner is not compatible, I could save my old stove burner and thermal coupling as spares in the oven. Their staff was watching out for me. It just seems a rather small burner diameter and not as stout.

[Hermia II]

If it aint broke, don't fix it

[JPA Cate]

We one time had an old Eno, it had been designed for a trailer or caravan, and still had little rubber coated feet on it. The boat had been built in 1974. In sometime after 1990, but before 1996, we found new bronze burners for it in Noumea. The oven burner in that stove was a large circle. It must have been steel, because it didn't look like cast iron, and it did have a rust problem. However, that large circular burner did a great job in that oven. Its low, med., and hi, settings worked well for cool, medium, and high heat for baking things and stayed pretty stable as long as it took to bake bread.

I think you are right to be concerned about a "too small" oven burner. The burner in our newer Force 10, runs all the way across the outboard side of the oven, so it is pretty full. It works better than our old Mariner, but the best stove/oven we've ever had on a boat was the Eno, and the huge circle burner did make even heat.

Ann

[SeeMonstrEd]

We had an old Force 10 4 burner stove that we replaced with a new new one. The old had to be retired when the thermocouple got stuck open on one of the burners. It had many other problems so we just replaced the whole thing with an exact drop in replacement.
The new oven does seem to heat better with the wider burner. One trick we have used in both ovens is a square pizza stone from Pamper Chef. If fits perfectly on top of the metal plate over the oven burner. It evens out the heat in the oven and help to level the temperature over time. It take a little bit longer to get up to temp but stays close once it gets there. More like an electric oven.

I definitely like the new burners better. Easier to clean since they have slots instead of holes the flames are more even. Our old one some of the holes had closed due to corrosion then when I cleaned them out they were larger than the rest. We like the new one better, and the igniter still works after more than a year.

[SVTatia]

Anyone have pictures of old vs new burners?
I just want to find out which one I have. I also totally rebuilt my oldish Force 10, but it was more to clean it up as it was filthy, specially the oven. I disassembled everything, cleaned (mostly with toilette bowl cleaner that works very well on stainless) and reassembled the like-new parts.
I also removed the wires for the sparker, the replacement cost was more than what I paid for the stove.
Also, my stove is the one that has the "turkey" oven thermometer beside the dial, so I guess I have the old one?

[SeeMonstrEd]

Sounds like you have the old one. Is the burner in the oven round? If so that is the old one.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by cadmus

Love Force 10. Love um. Great employees and great products. Not saying a thing negative here.

I am rebuilding an old late 80s early 90s 2 burner propane stove oven.
The nice staff at Force 10 suggested I upgrade to the "new" style burners for the stove (one big, one little). Not that the old burners were broken, just that the entire thing is taken apart and old style burners and parts are no longer available.



The smaller of the old burners always felt too small for any pot. The new burners look to be an even smaller diameter than the old counterparts. Those of you who used both the old style and new style Force 10 burners, is it really an "upgrade" or should i stick with the old ones? Impressions?


New ones are aluminum rather than heavy bronze.
For some reason they said the oven has to be the old style burner, investigating.

I just did the conversion to the new burners on my 3 burner Force 10. I picked it up in Washington State for $25 and the burner cast iron tops were... well, burned out. I ordered the one large and two small retro kiuts from Fisheries Supply for a little over $300. You better be handy because it is not as straight forward as you would think. In the end it worked out fine after 1/2 a day for fiddling.
In the end, it has a beautiful flame. If you do take this on there are 2 electro-thermic solenoids. one in the range valve and one in the oven valve. They are part number different from one another. They insert in the thermal-couple port.

[jordanbigel]

First, I have some old-style Force10 parts (burners/caps) which I would love to find a home for. They were purchased as spares for a 1999 Force10 4 burner unit. We replaced that cooker with a new Force10 3 burner in 2010 or 2011 maybe - that cooker has completely different burners from the original one (so our spares are useless, hence my desire to get them off the boat).

I had not realized they have introduced an even newer design - looking at the photos and specs for the current Force10 cookers, the burners look completely different from both of the older models I have owned, so I cannot offer any opinions on those new burners.

If you are interested in the spare parts from the 1999 cooker, let me know and I will dig them up and send you photos and part numbers.

[wingssail]

We replaced the burners on our three burner Force10 with the "new" style about three years ago. We installed a large, medium and small stove top burners and new style thermo-couple devices. They all work well and the new thermocouples are excellent. We also kept one of the old round burners and installed it in the oven since that was what the oven had; it still works but the temperature control does not work, so now it is manual, and that is OK.

On the stove top the big burner heats a full teapot or any other large pan quickly, and the medium is fine, The small one is good for re-heating a pot of coffee or frying eggs, so all is good. We make pies and roasts in the oven, no problem.

One issue we encountered was that, even with extra fiberglass insulation, the oven burner does not stay on when the stove gets hot, especially if we are also using any burners on the top. Our solution is to jam the knob in with a kitchen knife behind the handle. Not recommended. (Oh, the things you have to do when you fix stuff in third world countries).

The change from old to new burners is not totally plug and play, it takes some minor modifications to make it work.

We removed the broiler and closed it off since we could not obtain a control for the broiler/oven.

We also modified the top of the stove so it can be raised a bit for servicing the burners (change the screws to be inside not outside the stove).

[JPA Cate]

@ wingless:

What do you use to clean the interior of your oven?

Thanks.

Ann

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

@ wingless:

What do you use to clean the interior of your oven?

Thanks.

Ann

We are careful to catch spills in pans or aluminum foil. Then foaming oven cleaner is used when needed.

Occasionally scouring it with comet type of cleanser is also needed.

But honestly, we use the oven rarely and it does not get too dirty. We live in the tropics where a winter day can be 90 degrees. The oven is HOT.

[JPA Cate]

Beaut. Thanks for the input. We use ours a lot. I was a little scared to use "oven cleaner". You put my mind at ease. Thanks.

Ann