Greetings! I am a very frustrated Thermador owner. I have a GCRG366 range that has been nothing but a problem. We had an issue with the broiler 'popping' the glow igniters. The dual valve, the oven control, and the entire infrared assembly was replaced. It worked for about 6 months. One day I had the oven on and switched to the broiler and "pop" out goes the glow plug again. After $800 I gave up and have not repaired it. Now a new issue has cropped up with the oven. The oven heats up but there's a "sputtering" sound. Then after the oven comes to temp and shuts off and goes to reignite nothing happens. The glow is orangish but does not ignite the gas. You can ignite the gas manually using a fireplace lighter. I will change the glow igniter as I suspect that it may be worn. It's about 4 years old now. Any insight would be helpful. Also any opinion on possible replacements would be appreciated as I'm tiring of pouring money into this flawed appliance

Fed up in Seattle

OK, the Thermador really is testing me. There are 3 screws that hold the Glow igniter to the oven frame. 1 horizontal 2 vertical. They seem to be sheet metal screws. Well the 2 vertical ones are siezed and I boneheadedly stripped the heads trying to get them off. Why Thermador used a phillips head on this rather than torx or allen head I'll never know. Any ideas out there as to how to release the screws would be appreciated. There's only 6 inches of clearance so I was not able to use my cordless dewalt drill/driver. Any suggestions would be appreciated

When changing the bake igniter for the Thermador oven you do not need to loosen the oven burner assembly. You need only remove the "bottom" of the oven. Here are the steps I took
1. remove the oven door by opening it all the way and secure the safety catches on the hinges and then finally lifting it out. Remove the oven racks. Remove the assembly the rack slides into by lifiting it up and pulling it away from the mounting brackets. Then remove the bottom brackets nearest to the opening of the oven door (it's held by 2 screws). Then loosen the 2 stainless clips at the opening of the oven which holds the bottom oven interior piece in. Then slide the entire bottom piece out. The bake igniter is exposed. You simply loosen the 2 nuts off the bracket and pull it free. By the way, the screws that were stipped didn't budge because they have nuts on the end that are exposed once the oven bottom is removed. I replaced them with new ones. All in all a very frustrating experience. Now that I know how to do it it's a 45 minute job max. The "Sputtering" sound from the burner seems to be gone and the oven ignites quicker. The bake igniter seemed to do the trick. I'll go for repairing the broiler next.

Thanks Joe. I removed the bottom oven piece simply to access the ends of the stripped screws and found there was enough room to remove the bake igniter without lossening the bracket from the oven frame. I was relieved to find the nuts attached at the ends of the stripped screws which I 'converted' to 'flat head' screws by gently using a hack saw blade to cut a groove into the center of the stripped screw. Onward to the Broiler!