Bullseye After one year

[Gilmore]

When my bullseye was new, I cleaned the fire box after 4 cooks. I used a shop vacuum and had a few unburned pellets but little of no ash. Since then, I have probably cooked 50 times without cleaning the fire box. It starts every time in minutes. What I want to know is will it just quit working or is this normal? A second question: When I set the temp at 200 I never get 200. It always goes up to 225 or sometimes 250. Needless to say, I don't get much smoke flavor. I have a smoke tube and will start experimenting with it soon.
So, my question again, is will the igniter just quit without waring or do these igniters work forever? Thanks for any ideas. Gil

 

[C. Keeper]

When my bullseye was new, I cleaned the fire box after 4 cooks. I used a shop vacuum and had a few unburned pellets but little of no ash. Since then, I have probably cooked 50 times without cleaning the fire box. It starts every time in minutes. What I want to know is will it just quit working or is this normal? A second question: When I set the temp at 200 I never get 200. It always goes up to 225 or sometimes 250. Needless to say, I don't get much smoke flavor. I have a smoke tube and will start experimenting with it soon.
So, my question again, is will the igniter just quit without waring or do these igniters work forever? Thanks for any ideas. Gil

Igniters fail, without warning. Go into the igniter test mode to confirm failure.

 

[Waterboy]

The igniter isn’t likely to fail just because you don’t vacuum out the fire pot, it just may have trouble getting heat to the pellets to start them if it gets buried in ash. The bigger issue is if the ash covers the air intake holes in the fire pot then the controller is going to have to do gymnastics to try to get the temp that is set.

My Bullseye overshoots the set temp every time I start it up. I typically wait until the temp starts to settle back down before I start my cook.

I recommend you clean the pot more often and adjust the offset to try to get your low temps dialed in better. The Bullseye isn’t the best low and slow smoker but you can tweak it to better fit your needs.

 

[Greg Jones]

recteq claims some insanely high numbers like an average of 300k starts on the igniter before expected failure, but I burned one out in a Bullseye in less than 6 months. The clean pot is more likely due to an efficient brand of pellets (little or no bark, but because of that less smoke) you are using. Also, I’ve not heard of a single Bullseye owner here say that their grill ran at temps LESS than the set point. Use the offset feature as @Waterboy mentioned and you can get it closer.

 

[kstone113]

Probably an igniter failure. I've gone through one in 2 years and actually gone through 2 on my Bull though I think those were due to my outlet.

I scoop out the ash (by hand) and add pellets before each cook(prime the pot).

My temp always over shoots also but I always start my bull on riot mode and wait till it gets around 600 something and then I take it down to the temp I want to grill at.

 

[Gilmore]

Thanks to all. I just might get a second igniter and keep it on standby. Gil

 

[jasonbr1975]

Been having my bull’s-eye for two years now. I’ve never had an igniter issue. My temps tend to be pretty close to the setpoint may be a few degrees above or below but nothing radical. Although, when it was new it did burn a lot hotter than the setpoint but it seemed to have learned to stay closer to the setpoint after many cooks.

 

[Jeremy31]

I have my igniter sticking out into the firepot about an 1/8 inch and mine doesn't overshoot the set temp at startup by more than 5 degrees. I had the cooking grate and heat shield off it during one startup and saw pellets getting blown to the far side of the firepot and sometimes got to about 1 inch deep before catching fire. I am much happier with it now