Burner Plate Replacement

Hello all. I haven't been around in a while due to a condition called 4 month old son. Thankfully it doesn't spread fast but it sure does take up a lot of time and energy!! I've made it through this quite well and have been blessed to bring my son home to a warm house heated by reliable cheap coal. My darn oil for that boy!! However, as I move into the summer heating season and do my spring round of maintenance I'm in need of help for burner plate replacement. They were "OK" at the start of the heating season but now they are starting to get pretty bad. I patched what I could with furnace cement but I'm sure that's only going to take me so far.

Has anybody ever done this procedure before? Does the pot have to come out to do it? I'm good with my hands and usually do all my own work but I worry about taking this one on and being without hot water long enough for my wife to kill me. I'm assuming from the parts pictorial I"d need

9435683 Burner plate rope gasket
9436232K Burner plate set (6 of them)

in order to replace them. Any thoughts on how to do it, best methods, and cost would be greatly appreciated!!

~Jeremy

Call your favorite EFM dealer and just ask for everything needed to do a burner plate job. Plates, bolts/nuts, and gaskets. I recommend pulling the pot right out and doing the job on a bench. Patience, penetrating fluid, and anti-seize for the re-assembly. Don't overtorque the screws that hold the burner plates in place. You might as well replace the pot bushing if it is as old as the burner plates.

If all of this sounds overwelming, consider calling someone like Scrapper and see if you can exchange your entire pot assembly for a refurbished one.

Since it's a DF, you can change the plates through the fire door. You may not be able to get the ring out, but if you can, you can pull the ring and plate assy. out as one piece. Otherwise, you can replace them through the opening. Pulling the entire pot can be a big job and may not go well if the pipe doesn't cooperate and the air chamber won't pull off the air pipe.

If I was going to change the pot bushing, I'd remove the worm and pipe and take off the 4 bolts that hold the bottom of the pot in place.

There is some information about the bushing in this thread:

Checking the burner worm bushing

This one is about maintenance:

Annual Maintenance and Cleaning of the DF520 Boiler

This one shows replacing the plates through the fire door:

Pictorial: Changing the burner plates