---
title: "A Kenmore Gas Burner That Clicks and Will Not Light"
description: "When a Kenmore stove igniter keeps clicking, the spark is working and the flame is not. Cap seating, moisture, blocked ports — and when to smell gas and stop."
url: "https://kenmoremiami.support/blog/kenmore-cooktop-burner-will-not-light/"
date_modified: "2026-09-01"
Category: "Safety & Risks"
---


# A Kenmore Gas Burner That Clicks and Will Not Light

## Kenmore stove igniter keeps clicking: what the clicking already tells you

Start with the good news, because it removes half the possible repairs. **Clicking means the spark system has power and is firing.** The module is alive, the switch is closing, the wiring is intact. What is not happening is combustion, and that is a much shorter list.

All three causes live under the cap.

## Moisture, which is most of them

Anything that boils over runs into the burner head and sits around the ceramic electrode. A wet electrode sparks to the nearest wet surface instead of across the gap where the gas is, and the burner clicks indefinitely.

It is self-correcting once dry, which is why the burner that would not light on Sunday evening works fine on Monday morning — and why so many people conclude it is intermittent and mysterious.

Take the cap off, dry everything with a cloth, and give it ten minutes.

## The cap that is a millimeter out

The burner cap sits in a recess, and on most of these ranges it has an orientation. Put back in a hurry after a clean, it can sit proud on one side or rotated slightly, and the flame ring is then not where the electrode is aimed.

Lift it and set it down again properly. It is the second commonest cause and it takes five seconds.

## Blocked ports

The ring of small holes around the rim of the burner head delivers the gas. Boiled-over food bakes into them, and a burner with half its ports blocked lights slowly, unevenly, or on one side only.

A pin or a straightened paperclip clears them. **Not a toothpick** — the tip snaps off inside the port and then it is a job rather than a chore.

## The one that means stop

If you smell gas with every control in the off position, this page is finished. Do not click at anything, do not light a match, do not switch anything on or off. Leave the house with the door open behind you and call the gas company from outside.

That is not a repair question and it is not ours to answer first.

## The cooktop that looks completely dead

Worth including here because it arrives with the same phone call and it is not a failure at all.

On a Frigidaire-built range — a 790 — a dash in the display means the **cooktop is locked**. The manufacturer's own instruction is to press OFF and hold it for six seconds. The appliance is working perfectly and is doing precisely what somebody, quite possibly a small person, told it to do.

Several of these ranges have similar locks with similar releases. Checking that before assuming a control board has saved a good number of visits.

## When it is genuinely ours

After the cap, the drying, the ports and the electrode, what is left is the spark module, the wiring to it, the switch in that burner's control, or the gas supply to that burner specifically.

Those are measurements rather than checks, and they involve the gas train. That is where the homeowner half of this job ends.

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**[Read full article: A Kenmore Gas Burner That Clicks and Will Not Light](https://kenmoremiami.support/blog/kenmore-cooktop-burner-will-not-light/)**