Pilot will not stay lit during/after burn cycle

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Sherman Cravens

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I have a State Select natural gas water heater vintage 2003. It has a standing pilot light. No hot water one morning, so I pulled the burner and thermocouple/pilot assy out and the thermocouple was visibly bad. It has a component part inline in the thermocouple bracket and it was visibly blown. Ordered a replacement OEM thermocouple/pilot assy. Vacuumed quite a bit of rust from the flue out of the combustion chamber. Installed the replacement and lit the pilot and the burner fired up. Thought everything was fine, but again no hot water. Either the pilot is extinguishing during or after a burn cycle.

I did remove the thermocouple from the gas control valve and re-seated it, thinking maybe it didn't seat properly.

Called a plumber, but all he did was light the pilot and cycled the thermostat on the gas control valve 5 or 6 times. The pilot remained lit, but he wasn't on site for more than about 15 minutes. Told me if I continued to have problems call State and order a gas control valve. He didn't do any testing.

Called State to discuss the problem and they told me I should see a minimum of 10mv at the thermocouple

Tonight, I removed the burner and thermocouple/pilot assy again outside of the combustion chamber. I hooked the pilot tube, thermocouple and igniter cable up and lit the pilot with the entire assy outside of the water heater. I had hooked up a multi-meter to the thermocouple and I am getting a reading of 1.1 to 1.3 on the 200mv scale on a digital multi-meter. Am I reading the multi-meter correctly?

I ran the pilot for 2 hours and it ran until I turned the pilot off.

What am I missing here or getting wrong?

Thanks,
Sherman
 
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