Bama BBQ
Well-known member
Yesterday was a super busy cleaning day on the Bull after it went haywire & overloaded the firebox with pellets, smoke & heavy smut.
It smoldered & bellowed heavy smoke so thick I could barely see the grill under my carport to turn it off. Of course when I did hit the OFF button the fan kept running & then the lid popped up about 8 inches high when the raw pellet gas ignited with a low boom. Got it unplugged, the lid raised & found what little grease that was on the drip pan in flames (foil had just been changed before the cook) and had maybe 30 minutes of cook time on some ribs when this happened.
I literally had to scrub & rinse the entire cabinet inside with steel wool & stainless cleaner to get rid of the soot & smut, this means emptying the pellets, flushing everything a little at a time with water & using a shop vac to suck it up until it's clean, (no drian on the bottom of the barrel) drying everything out with forced air & a heat gun & clearing the auger tube of pellets that didn't come out. It wore my old azz out but I did get it clean.
It has been getting more & more unpredictable since I was told to change the auger rate from 30 to 65 because it was having a hard time hitting high temps & various temp swings during some cooks.
More than once it would come up to set temp, stabilize & run solid for 30 minutes or so & then start losing temp by 5 - 1 5 degrees at a time & not recover, keeps going down until I would have to unplug & start all over again & then it might or might not run as intended to finish the cook. Other times the temps would increase & keep going up into oblivion until it was shutdown to restart again. Yes, I've had some solid cooks too, it seems if it's something like burgers or chicken cooking for 30-45 minute at 375 -400 degrees it doesn't mess up as often, however; 3 big meals have been totally ruined in the last 2 weeks & I use it a lot. In my mind, ruining $150 or so in groceries is unacceptable unless it's something stupid like running out of pellets or a power outage etc.
Today I talked with a couple of RT customer service reps, one of them asked me for pics & I sent them, another rep ran me thru the test screens & it passed on all of them.
They first thought it was the fan, then maybe my pellets. They were admittedly perplexed & said they would talk it over & call me back.
There's been a few times when the controller screen is lit up appearing normal but the fan or the auger would quit working later into the cook, I unplug it & start over & everything runs fine again. I simply can't trust it to run all the way through a cook without watching it every second for it to have a controller brain fart !
Got the call back & they have decided the PID controller has or is gone bad & have one on the way, these guys do have good customer service & for that I'm thankful.
Hopefully this will fix it & I can relax & not have to watch it like a stick burner on steroids
It smoldered & bellowed heavy smoke so thick I could barely see the grill under my carport to turn it off. Of course when I did hit the OFF button the fan kept running & then the lid popped up about 8 inches high when the raw pellet gas ignited with a low boom. Got it unplugged, the lid raised & found what little grease that was on the drip pan in flames (foil had just been changed before the cook) and had maybe 30 minutes of cook time on some ribs when this happened.
I literally had to scrub & rinse the entire cabinet inside with steel wool & stainless cleaner to get rid of the soot & smut, this means emptying the pellets, flushing everything a little at a time with water & using a shop vac to suck it up until it's clean, (no drian on the bottom of the barrel) drying everything out with forced air & a heat gun & clearing the auger tube of pellets that didn't come out. It wore my old azz out but I did get it clean.
It has been getting more & more unpredictable since I was told to change the auger rate from 30 to 65 because it was having a hard time hitting high temps & various temp swings during some cooks.
More than once it would come up to set temp, stabilize & run solid for 30 minutes or so & then start losing temp by 5 - 1 5 degrees at a time & not recover, keeps going down until I would have to unplug & start all over again & then it might or might not run as intended to finish the cook. Other times the temps would increase & keep going up into oblivion until it was shutdown to restart again. Yes, I've had some solid cooks too, it seems if it's something like burgers or chicken cooking for 30-45 minute at 375 -400 degrees it doesn't mess up as often, however; 3 big meals have been totally ruined in the last 2 weeks & I use it a lot. In my mind, ruining $150 or so in groceries is unacceptable unless it's something stupid like running out of pellets or a power outage etc.
Today I talked with a couple of RT customer service reps, one of them asked me for pics & I sent them, another rep ran me thru the test screens & it passed on all of them.
They first thought it was the fan, then maybe my pellets. They were admittedly perplexed & said they would talk it over & call me back.
There's been a few times when the controller screen is lit up appearing normal but the fan or the auger would quit working later into the cook, I unplug it & start over & everything runs fine again. I simply can't trust it to run all the way through a cook without watching it every second for it to have a controller brain fart !
Got the call back & they have decided the PID controller has or is gone bad & have one on the way, these guys do have good customer service & for that I'm thankful.
Hopefully this will fix it & I can relax & not have to watch it like a stick burner on steroids
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