Traeger circa 95/96 issues - any gurus?

[Zalick]

My mom has a large Traeger purchased around 95/96. They had it "refurbished" a few years ago by GK Machine
but not sure exactly what that entailed.

My stepdad passed away in April so I decided to cook our turkey on his Traeger instead of my new 2 star.

I started it up and set to high for a preheat and it ran fine for about 30 mins. I then switched to smoke and out the turkey on. It smoked for about an hour then stopped smoking. I put the turkey in the oven and took a look under inside.

The fan was blowing but the firebox was nearly overflowing. I cleaned out the pellets and turned off the grill. I turned back on and the auger pushed pellets out. The igniter was hot but didn't seem to get hot enough to ignite the pellets.

I emptied half the firepot and then manually lit the pellets. About half the pot was flaming well but the auger seemed to push too many pellets on and snuffed it out again. It was in medium setting.

I emptied most of if the firepot again and manually lit. I set it on high and it came up to temp and worked for a couple hours. I then turned it off.

I'm not quite sure what the issue is. Seems like the igniter is failing and not lighting quick enough to get all the pellets lit. Also seems like the fan may not be blowing enough to get all the pellets in the firepot lit. Lastly, could be pushing pellets too often? I didn't time but seems like it pushed pellets every couple minutes on medium setting.

For sentimental reasons I don't want to get rid of it. Any thoughts? Can I easily upgrade the controller and motor?

Thanks!

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[rwalters]

Running a pellet cooker to grilling temps and then switching to smoking temps can often cause issues as the logic of the controller struggles to bring down the ambient temp that much without losing control of the fire, ultimately having a flameout. There’s really not a need to take a pellet grill to high and then switch to smoke... at least not that I can think of. That being said, anytime you are running 100° hotter than what you want to change the controller to, a best practice would be to open the lid a few times for short durations allowing the heat to quickly escape... ultimately assisting the controller with the reduction of ambient pit temp.

Not sure why you were having issues after cleaning out the burn pot, unless you weren’t completely cleaning it out. When you say that you cleaned things out after the flameout, did you start with a squeaky clean burn pot?

The old school igniters are a common weak point, so perhaps I am wrong... but the issues you are describing sound more related to the quick change in temps and the filling of the fire pot w/ unburned pellets after the fire had died. It’s possible that the igniter is failing or the auger is misfeeding, but it doesn’t really sound like that to me.

 

[rwalters]

If you want to do a nice upgrade, check out:

https://www.savannahstoker.com/products/savannah-stoker-pellet-grill-control-system

 

[Zalick]

Thanks Robb!

It does sound like my switching caused the issue initially.

I did empty the box the first time. I kept it open and watched the pellets fill it. They didn't ignite so I put my temp probe down on the igniter through the pellets and it was under 200. I'm wondering if the igniter is on the fritz and the controller is pushing pellets faster than the igniter can get the fire going at startup.

I'll give it a try tomorrow and see what happens.

I'll check out the controller too. That would be great to upgrade. I know it's still to spend a bunch of $$ on a 25 year old barrel but I'm going to keep this thing going as long as possible!

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