Trailblazer Erratic temp problems...

[Davidvc1964]

Last night my 340 caught on fire. I turn it on to 350° and it slowly arrived at the temp. Started grilling some burgers and noticed the temp had dropped to 300°. A few minutes later it was down to 220°. I removed the burgers and brought them inside. Thought I’d leave the grill on to see if it would come back up the correct temp. A few minutes later I noticed that it was suddenly 400° and quickly rising. I went out and opened the lid and there were flames coming out about 6 feet high. I grabbed the fire extinguisher (because the grill is on a covered deck) and extinguished the fire. This morning I went out to clean everything up and started the grill again. It started, the auger was working and pellets were dropping into the pot. Everything seemed to be working fine...it got to the set temp (280°). However, after a few minutes, it went up to 379° and then dropped down to 220°. This cycle went on for about 30 minutes before I finally shut it off. I’ve already replaced the electronic controller and fan. I’ve also been using Kingsford pellets as recommended to me by RecTeq. As of now, I’m afraid to use it.
Anyone have any ideas or similar situations?
Thanks

 

[mooncusser2k]

Can you tell whether the fire was on the drip pan or underneath, in the barrel?

 

[Davidvc1964]

Can you tell whether the fire was on the drip pan or underneath, in the barrel?

Not completely sure because the fire was so huge. The drip pan is covered with tinfoil but was probably a little dirty. I had used it two times since putting in new tinfoil. It appeared as though it was coming from the underneath.

 

[Fhughes]

If the temp was dropping then more then like a flameout occurred. Maybe due to bridging in the pellets. It creates a void in the auger thus the flameout. Since you left the unit it keeps pumping pellets in trying to get back up to temp. When I reignites it has an abundance of fuel. Ask me how I know I’ve been there

 

[mooncusser2k]

Something that's also easy to overlook is keeping food completely over the drip pan. Especially foods that will drain grease. If you're close to the sides or not over the pan, it drips into the barrel below and can catch fire. Some folks using GrillGrates turn them sideways to avoid that.

Now it's also possible to get a grease fire on the drip tray, especially if stuff is built up from prior cooks. Ask me how I know

 

[Davidvc1964]

If the temp was dropping then more then like a flameout occurred. Maybe due to bridging in the pellets. It creates a void in the auger thus the flameout. Since you left the unit it keeps pumping pellets in trying to get back up to temp. When I reignites it has an abundance of fuel. Ask me how I know I’ve been there

Thank you for your response. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by bridging in the pellets. I’m assuming you may be referring to a blockage with the pellets...feeding into the auger? If so, that’s quite possible. I did have a full hopper and when I stuck my hand in to move the pellets, a lot of them kinda caved in and dropped down. However, after I cleaned the grill up this morning, it had the same color erratic behavior. Even more confusing is that I just fired it up a little while ago and set the temp at 280°...left it on for 30 minutes and it never wavered off 280°. I’ve been having these unpredictable temperatures changes for awhile, but last night was the first fire. I’m using Kingsford brand pellets as was recommended by Recteq. I guess my question would be... what am I supposed to do if the bridging happens again?

 

[Davidvc1964]

Something that's also easy to overlook is keeping food completely over the drip pan. Especially foods that will drain grease. If you're close to the sides or not over the pan, it drips into the barrel below and can catch fire. Some folks using GrillGrates turn them sideways to avoid that.

Now it's also possible to get a grease fire on the drip tray, especially if stuff is built up from prior cooks. Ask me how I know

Thank you. I’m actually quite cautious of keeping food over the drip pan. I only had two burger patties on it and removed them when I noticed the grill wasn’t heating up...they hadn’t even started to cook. As for the build up of stuff, I had just cleaned it two cooks prior to using it last night. I suppose it’s possible, but I can’t imagine there was enough build up to burn like it did.

 

[Fhughes]

Thank you for your response. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by bridging in the pellets. I’m assuming you may be referring to a blockage with the pellets...feeding into the auger? If so, that’s quite possible. I did have a full hopper and when I stuck my hand in to move the pellets, a lot of them kinda caved in and dropped down. However, after I cleaned the grill up this morning, it had the same color erratic behavior. Even more confusing is that I just fired it up a little while ago and set the temp at 280°...left it on for 30 minutes and it never wavered off 280°. I’ve been having these unpredictable temperatures changes for awhile, but last night was the first fire. I’m using Kingsford brand pellets as was recommended by Recteq. I guess my question would be... what am I supposed to do if the bridging happens again?

Yes it’s a blockage, it happens when you have pellets of different length. The long pellets will create a bridge and not allow more to drop. The pellets I use are lumberjack and all pellets are the same length

 

[dmills]

Last night my 340 caught on fire. I turn it on to 350° and it slowly arrived at the temp. Started grilling some burgers and noticed the temp had dropped to 300°. A few minutes later it was down to 220°. I removed the burgers and brought them inside. Thought I’d leave the grill on to see if it would come back up the correct temp. A few minutes later I noticed that it was suddenly 400° and quickly rising. I went out and opened the lid and there were flames coming out about 6 feet high. I grabbed the fire extinguisher (because the grill is on a covered deck) and extinguished the fire. This morning I went out to clean everything up and started the grill again. It started, the auger was working and pellets were dropping into the pot. Everything seemed to be working fine...it got to the set temp (280°). However, after a few minutes, it went up to 379° and then dropped down to 220°. This cycle went on for about 30 minutes before I finally shut it off. I’ve already replaced the electronic controller and fan. I’ve also been using Kingsford pellets as recommended to me by RecTeq. As of now, I’m afraid to use it.
Anyone have any ideas or similar situations?
Thanks

I would clean the grill and start without the drip plate. Let it come up to a low temp and stabilize. Bump up the heat and figure out if you are getting pellet jams as it attempts to feed more fuel. If any of the pellets got wet or damp it is possible they expanded in your auger and are causing jams.

Last night my 340 caught on fire. I turn it on to 350° and it slowly arrived at the temp. Started grilling some burgers and noticed the temp had dropped to 300°. A few minutes later it was down to 220°. I removed the burgers and brought them inside. Thought I’d leave the grill on to see if it would come back up the correct temp. A few minutes later I noticed that it was suddenly 400° and quickly rising. I went out and opened the lid and there were flames coming out about 6 feet high. I grabbed the fire extinguisher (because the grill is on a covered deck) and extinguished the fire. This morning I went out to clean everything up and started the grill again. It started, the auger was working and pellets were dropping into the pot. Everything seemed to be working fine...it got to the set temp (280°). However, after a few minutes, it went up to 379° and then dropped down to 220°. This cycle went on for about 30 minutes before I finally shut it off. I’ve already replaced the electronic controller and fan. I’ve also been using Kingsford pellets as recommended to me by RecTeq. As of now, I’m afraid to use it.
Anyone have any ideas or similar situations?
Thanks

 

[Greg Jones]

Yes it’s a blockage, it happens when you have pellets of different length. The long pellets will create a bridge and not allow more to drop. The pellets I use are lumberjack and all pellets are the same length

Not all Lumber Jack pellets are the same length. My experience with Lumber Jack as been mostly positive, however the only bridging problem I’ve ever had was with Lumber Jack CharHickory. I bought 5 bags, all 5 were a problem, with some pellets as long as 2-½ inches. I didn‘t cherry pick pellets for this picture-these were some of the pellets over the mouth of the auger on my Bullseye when they bridged over.

 

[Davidvc1964]

Yes it’s a blockage, it happens when you have pellets of different length. The long pellets will create a bridge and not allow more to drop. The pellets I use are lumberjack and all pellets are the same length

Thank you. I was using Bear Mountain pellets but on the recommendation of Recteq, I switched to Kingsford. I still have bags of Bear Mountain and bags of Kingsford. I can’t just randomly purchase different types in hopes that everything will be good. I’m literally running out of room to store the bags. Seems this unit has been temperamental since day one. I’ve had so many issues, it’s really frustrating. While Recteq support has been phenomenal, I’m thinking I must have got a lemon. Thank you very much for your help.

 

[Davidvc1964]

I would clean the grill and start without the drip plate. Let it come up to a low temp and stabilize. Bump up the heat and figure out if you are getting pellet jams as it attempts to feed more fuel. If any of the pellets got wet or damp it is possible they expanded in your auger and are causing jams.

Yes, I did that the following day. I started the grill at 280° after thoroughly cleaning it. Unfortunately, the temp was erratic again, so after 30 minutes of it continually going up and down, I shut it off. As for the pellets getting moist, my grill is under a covered deck (out of the elements). I keep all my opened bags of pellets in an airtight racing fuel can (see picture). All of my unopened bags are stored in the basement under my house. Literally no chance of a single pellet getting wet. Ironically, I turned on the grill again last night at 280° and it held the temperature spot on for 30 minutes...this only adds to my confusion.
Thank you for your reply.

 

[dmills]

I am a fairly new Rec tec owner, but had a Pit Boss almost burn to the ground because of pellet jams and the Pit Boss controller is not great at handling temp swings (nice way of saying it sucked). I have been burning the Traeger (Hickory, Cherry, Maple Blend) and have used about 100 lbs at this point with great success including a 23 hour brisket cook and the rec tec was rock solid on temperature in all kind of conditions and temperatures.

 

[Waterboy]

These grills are typically rock solid so when you have a problem like yours you have to try some basic things to eliminate user error or bad pellets. You seem to have done that.
At this point I would recommend that you call customer service back and let them know you need more from them than changing pellet brand. Many folks use Bear Mountain pellets with zero problems. I know there are individual times when a certain bag or a particular variety (such as the Char Hickory example @Greg Jones gave) can be a problem but overall Bear Mountain isn’t the problem IMHO.
I think RT tells people to try their recommended brand like most IT departments tell people to reboot their computer. If it works, great. If it doesn’t we’ll look into it further. Sounds like you’ve done the reboot, now let them look into it further. It will take some of your time to call and work through the problem but these grills are worth the effort.
Good luck! I really hope they can find the problem and get you back to focusing on cooking up some great food.

 

[Fhughes]

@Greg Jones i think I drink too much when I bbq, apparently the last batch of pellets I bought was cooking pellets perfect mix I noticed because I need to pick up batch

 

[C. Keeper]

@Greg Jones i think I drink too much when I bbq, apparently the last batch of pellets I bought was cooking pellets perfect mix I noticed because I need to pick up batch

You're NOT drinking too much, you're not BBQing enough.

 

[TomatoBob]

I am still a noobie compared to most who post here but I can tell you one thing that I learned a few months ago when I experienced some problems similar to what is being discussed here. It is important to clean out the ash in heating pot from time to time. If too much ash accumulates it blocks the air holes making it difficult for the pellets to catch fire. Meanwhile the auger keeps dropping more and more pellets into the pot.

Eventually, everything ignites in an almost explosive way. Regardless of what your you have the temp set at, it will quickly jump to 500+ while belching out tons of smoke. The computer will try to lower the temperature by reducing that air flow, however it seems that the auger keeps the supply of pellets coming which eventually results in another heat spike.

Eventually everything levels out but it can be a little frightening when this happens. Vacuuming out the ash and dust solved the problem for me.

 

[Rlhanson]

RT-340 Trailblazer. I've had some temp swings, too. I have been stirring the pellet hopper when it spikes up and that helps. I also checked the minimum feed rate and it was set at 3.0? I don't remember dialing that down?> The TR preset is 6.5. Maybe it's different for the RT-340? I set it to 4.0 this morning and now it is dialed in @ 250 for the 7# butt we're doing.

 

[TomatoBob]

I just checked my minimum feed setting and it is at 3.0 as well. Other than what I described above, I am not experiencing any problems. Should I leave my 340 at 3.0 or change to a different setting?

 

[Greg Jones]

The only reasons to change the feed rate are 1) lower the feed rate if the grill runs hotter than the set temp (as determined by the grill’s RTD probe) or 2) raise the feed rate if experiencing flame outs at the lowest temp setting. So if you are not experiencing problems, leave it as is!