Temp went crazy, burnt my beautiful butt!!

[Shedd]

Folks say Traegers are fickle and have a learning curve. Ok. Is it worth giving this another shot? Can I maintain cooker stability by ensuring the hopper doesn’t develop another hole and run dry? Is that why it went haywire before or is there likely another issue at work here? If I try once more, I’d have to run it at 180 overnight then turn the temp up to 225 in the morning, monitoring the hopper for the day. Running at 225 overnight the hopper would develop another hole and run dry.

Do like one of my buddies, he made a cardboard box up to fit inside opening of his hopper with lid open of course, it’s about a foot tall . He fills it with pellets and hasn’t had that issue shy. His is a pit boss but was doing the same thing. I use a gallon bucket with the bottom cut out on mine if I’m starting an all night cook before 9 pm. because mine has run out of pellets twice by 8 am the next morning, I usually try to start my cooks about 10 pm so I don’t run out. But on yours the extra volume would keep it going. Worth a try. Either way let us know.

 

[RayClem]

Do like one of my buddies, he made a cardboard box up to fit inside opening of his hopper with lid open of course, it’s about a foot tall . He fills it with pellets and hasn’t had that issue shy. His is a pit boss but was doing the same thing. I use a gallon bucket with the bottom cut out on mine if I’m starting an all night cook before 9 pm. because mine has run out of pellets twice by 8 am the next morning, I usually try to start my cooks about 10 pm so I don’t run out. But on yours the extra volume would keep it going. Worth a try. Either way let us know.

If you enlarge the spout of an empty 1 gallon milk jug to the size of a softball, you could fill the jug with pellets, fill your hopper with pellets and then invert the milk jug over the hopper to provide some extra pellet inventory.

In an earlier post, I suggested spraying the inside of the hopper with food safe silicone spray to allow the pellets to slide more easily down the sides of the hopper. I guess you could spray the inside of the milk jug as well, but the LDPE is probably slick enough.

 

[Skunther]

I’m apparently a glutton for punishment.
Last try, I cleaned the chamber, grill, everything, filled the hopper with Traeger’s gourmet pellets (as I have every time) started followed the instructions for firing it up (started it up on Smoke for 5 minutes with lid open, then when fire established closed lid and set temp to 225, waited 15 minutes for temp to establish). The temp peaked at about 238 at 7 minutes or so. It went down from there though, and at the 15 minute mark the temp is down to 120 and still dropping, though I still hear the fan and auger working.

I never even got the pork on the grill. Switching to the oven.

What is wrong with this thing?

 

[CripCrac]

I’m apparently a glutton for punishment.
Last try, I cleaned the chamber, grill, everything, filled the hopper with Traeger’s gourmet pellets (as I have every time) started followed the instructions for firing it up (started it up on Smoke for 5 minutes with lid open, then when fire established closed lid and set temp to 225, waited 15 minutes for temp to establish). The temp peaked at about 238 at 7 minutes or so. It went down from there though, and at the 15 minute mark the temp is down to 120 and still dropping, though I still hear the fan and auger working.

I never even got the pork on the grill. Switching to the oven.

What is wrong with

 

[CripCrac]

I wish I knew. I have an older pro 22 that has been nothing but problems. It will run fine for about 30 min and then start billowing smoke as the temp drops. Sometimes it will keep dropping and shut off due to an ler code. Other times it will get back to temp but will do the same heavy smoke thing every 5 min or so. The smoke is so heavy it looks like someone is burning tires in my backyard. I have a new controller and hot rod on the way, so I'm hoping I can get this thing working.

 

[Timmy]

I wish I knew. I have an older pro 22 that has been nothing but problems. It will run fine for about 30 min and then start billowing smoke as the temp drops. Sometimes it will keep dropping and shut off due to an ler code. Other times it will get back to temp but will do the same heavy smoke thing every 5 min or so. The smoke is so heavy it looks like someone is burning tires in my backyard. I have a new controller and hot rod on the way, so I'm hoping I can get this thing working.

If the grill starts up ok I wouldn’t replace the hot rod just yet. If the controller didn’t come with an rtd make sure you get a new one and install it at the same time as the controller.

All the hot rod does is light the grill , then it shuts off until it is called to light the grill again.