Problems with Louisiana Grill

[hnd]

I've had an LG800 Elite for 4 months now and the thing has been great. Worked flawlessly. Until this weekend. started a brisket in the morning, everything great. filled hopper and left for a few hours, came home and the brisket was overdone bark on bottom hard as crap and my cooker rolling at 375 degrees on actual. while the setpoint had done what it was supposed to (drop to 180 after meat probe hit a certain temp) but the cooker was not doing as told.



So i called LG/Danson and the guy was like, well here are a bunch of things we can do. Then he asked me how old it was. I told him that it was 4 mo old and i bought it at costco. He went from here are some steps to try to I'm going to send you a new control board.



So I'm wondering if there are known issues with the costco units.



My brother bought one the same time adn he's had nothing but issues with it. But his turned out to be his chamber probe and some internal settings on the control board he had to change out.

[Free Mr. Tony]

The temp probe was my first thought. There are several different versions of those controllers, and I know awhile back many of them shipped with some bad settings that caused overshooting issues.


It's a tried and true design that works so it's just a matter of figuring out the cause. If the controller doesn't do the trick, try the temp probe. They should be able to work it out for you.

I seriously doubt it's just a Costco version issue. They use the same components for all of them as far as I know.

[Rhino99]

I had a Louisiana as my first pellet cooker. It was similar to your experience. Ran flawlessly for the first several months, then I started having the same issue you describe. At first I was sent a new internal temp probe to replace, and that didn't do the trick. So they then sent me a new control board, and that seemed to work for the first few cooks. Then the same thing started happening again, or the opposite, where the fire would just go completely out in the middle of a cook. After replacing my second temp probe without success, I went ahead and just gave the darn thing away and bought another brand.

[MountainMan]

I had a Louisiana as my first pellet cooker as well.


After months of attempting to make it cook correctly (with factory "help") I finally dumped it and went with an FEC-100 then later a PG-1000 and have never been happier.

[Sakamoto]

While I would imagine it is possible for Costco to get a run of defective controllers, usually when a manufacturer is dealing with a huge client like Costco they will really go out of the way to ensue that Clients customers are happy.
I've had an LG800 Elite for 4 months now and the thing has been great. Worked flawlessly. Until this weekend. started a brisket in the morning, everything great. filled hopper and left for a few hours, came home and the brisket was overdone bark on bottom hard as crap and my cooker rolling at 375 degrees on actual. while the setpoint had done what it was supposed to (drop to 180 after meat probe hit a certain temp) but the cooker was not doing as told.



So i called LG/Danson and the guy was like, well here are a bunch of things we can do. Then he asked me how old it was. I told him that it was 4 mo old and i bought it at costco. He went from here are some steps to try to I'm going to send you a new control board.



So I'm wondering if there are known issues with the costco units.



My brother bought one the same time adn he's had nothing but issues with it. But his turned out to be his chamber probe and some internal settings on the control board he had to change out.

[TravelingJ]

I don't have a Louisiana cooker, but on my Pit Boss I've found that if I put food right on the grates, it overcooks on the bottom. I always put in cookie sheets with racks on top of them, and the food goes on those racks. Even it I put it in an aluminum pan (like when I'm doing Pepper Stout Beef) I make sure to set it on the racks.

[hnd]

yeah, we have 3 other LG units in our immediate family. lg700's and 900's. all are years old and we've loved them. hence why i bought one. as 5 person family with children of all years with all sorts of things going on, maintaining my stickburner while fun took a lot of time and its just not the season where i can do it.



The only reason this brisket was overcooked on the bottom was because it cooked it at 400. i've done about half dozen briskets on it to perfection.



Believe you me, LG will be hounded until this unit runs as it should because i've seen what they can be.