Fix a water heater - Pilot light keeps going out

So, I had been having issues with my water heater pilot light going out. The only way I knew was at 5am when my wife tried to take a shower and woke me up and said " there is no hot water". Not a good way to wake up at all!
I would get it going again and it would last a week or so and then it would go out again. Sometimes I would relight it and check it before bed to be sure it was still on, and it would be off. I would relight it again and it would stay good for a week or two.
Well, after fighting with it, I decided to call and see if it was still under warranty, since the home was 6 years old. My water heater is a State GS650YBRTW.

I called State and they said that it was already out of warranty and it had a 6 year warranty. Since I didn't move in until August of that year, they said if I sent them my closing statement, they would update the warranty to the move-in date. Cool!
Well, I could not find it, so I just called a repair company in the area. They came out and said it would be 700 dollars to fix it. THEN tried to sell me a new BETTER Rheem unit for only....2100 bucks! Do what?? 700 was bad enough, there is no way I was paying that OR the 2100.
So, I was back to trying to fix it myself. I was able to get my warranty updated and they sent me a new pilot light assembly hoping that would fix it.







I checked everything out to be sure I had what I need to do the job and everything seemed to be there. I got my tools ready as well. I had three wrenches 1- 3/4, 1-7/16 and 1- 3/8 inch. These were to take the lines out of the gas valve. a flashlight to see into the burner assembly area, screw driver to remove the screw holding the pilot assembly to the burner assembly, and pliers to remove the broken viewing glass that I had.

I shut off the valve that went to the gas valve so there was no gas going to the system. I started to take everything apart starting with the tubes going into the Gas valve.

Once I got those loose I pulled apart the ignitor wire from the ignitor.

Then I removed the nuts from the burner compartment cover and since everything was loose, I worked the door out and away from the water heater.

Once that was done I could pull the whole burner assembly out of the water heater. When I tried to do this, it would not come out. It was stuck on something. I got my flashlight and looked in there and realized it was set down into a bracket. Below is a video showing how you have to lift it up out of that bracket to remove the unit.

Now that it is out, i took a good look at it, so that so that I could see where everything was mounted. I used the screw driver to remove the screws holding the pilot assembly to the burner assembly. There were three screws.

With that off, I pushed the new pilot assembly through the opening in the cover and re-attached.

Then I replaced the viewing glass I broke when I tried to pry it off. You can see, there are little tabs that hold it in place. I used the pliers to pinch those tabs together which allowed it to be removed.

Then I pressed in the new glass

I then just re-installed everything the way that I took it out. One thing to note, make sure you tighten the middle gas tube first when re-installing the tubes into the gas valve. It will give you more room for the wrench not having the smaller tubes in the way.
Once I got everything done, I turned on the main gas valve, lit the pilot light and fired up the burner!
Now that the burner was on and gas was flowing, I sprayed my bottle of soap bubbles around the fittings to make sure there were not leaks.
It took me maybe 1/2 hour. The parts were free for me since they were under warranty so I saved some big money!
I hope this helps you if you find the need to go through the same process!