I sent them a thorough email explaining about airflow characteristics and lack of stoking the fire pot correctly with too much fuel in it, thus causing a dirty, sooty, flame.
Their reply this afternoon:
Hi David,
Thank you for contacting Traeger! My name is REP NAME REMOVED.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS! I personal thank you so much for providing me with this. I’m getting this forwarded right now.
Thank you, thank you.
If there is anything else that we can do to assist you please don’t hesitate to let us know. Thank you for choosing Traeger!
All the best,
REP NAME REMOVED
Customer Service Representative
TRAEGER WOOD FIRED GRILLS
800.872.3437 (Toll-free)
TraegerGrills.com
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PRIVACY: This e-mail message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain privileged and/or confidential information. Unauthorized use, distribution, review or disclosure is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies of the original message.
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JUL 11, 2017 *|* 06:50PM MDT
David replied:
I’ve confirmed this is an airflow issue in the fire pot. When the unit approaches its set temperature or runs in Super Smoke mode, it begins cycling the fan on and off. When the fan goes to off, the soot is coming out of the fire pot when it has not burned enough fuel out to cause it to smolder only. I made a video of it. Your firmware programmer cannot turn the fan to off or so low that it is not stoking the fire pot with that much fuel in it. GMG made this exact same mistake. It’s nasty to see how much black smoke is coming from the fire when it’s starved of oxygen and not stoked properly. You an see the flame is rising without any input air or disturbance.
Feel free to have your controller programmer(s) reach out to me directly if they want video or my input. I worked directly with GMG on the very same issue when they are were attempting to achieve tighter temperature swings with less overshoot. In the end, we solved it and all was well for me and their customer base. Unfortunately, dirty combustion is not good for cooking. It’s giving a good cooker a bad name already.
Please fix. I’m happy to test a beta firmware or an improved fan which provides more airflow at lower commanded PWM speeds.
Again, mine was delivered with the latest 01.01.02 firmware.
Regards,
David
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With that said, I'll check when I get home to see if I get a new update and I'll remove the collar. Did it make any difference for you or is the update not out yet? I was just coming here to update my thread, so thanks for starting one focused on fixing issues on the Timberline.