Was feeling better today, so decided to do a full maintenance on “Lil Smokey,” my RT-340. I had noticed some pellet dust in the hopper and decided to see the extent of it and clean things out. Turns out there wasn’t a huge amount of dust, but enough that I didn’t want to chance having it pull in some moisture and solidify.
I had run the pellet supply down below the level of the hand guard (or, the level where it would be if it was still installed.
). Then, I manually removed as many remaining pellets as I could before vacuuming out the rest, along with the pellet dust. Did an auger test run until I pushed the remainder of the pellets out of the tube and sucked any residual dust out with the vacuum. When there's no pellets in the tube, the air flow through it is sufficient to pull out any sawdust.
Vacuumed out the small amount of ash in the bottom of the cook chamber, re-foiled the drip pan, cleaned the grill, put a good handful of pellets in fire pot and reassembled things. Fired it up and it came up to 400F without issue and held steady. I think life is good again.
As an observation, while there really wasn’t a huge amount of pellet dust to be removed, the auger really doesn’t move whatever there is out so it will eventually accumulate. I use Bear Mountain Hickory pellets mostly and find them to be relatively clean, but there is usually a small amount of dust in the bottom of the bag. As a result, I have quit pouring the pellets directly from the bag to the hopper, especially when the bag gets nearly empty. Instead, I bought one of these…
https://www.amazon.com/WINCO-FBM-32R-Mini-Basket-Silver/dp/B07P2K7NN4/ref=sr_1_12_sspa?crid=29PHO9NW6CBLZ&keywords=coarse+sifter&qid=1704243657&sprefix=coarse+sifter,aps,168&sr=8-12-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1
…to scoop pellets and leave the dust behind. Works great for me. YMMV
I had run the pellet supply down below the level of the hand guard (or, the level where it would be if it was still installed.
). Then, I manually removed as many remaining pellets as I could before vacuuming out the rest, along with the pellet dust. Did an auger test run until I pushed the remainder of the pellets out of the tube and sucked any residual dust out with the vacuum. When there's no pellets in the tube, the air flow through it is sufficient to pull out any sawdust.Vacuumed out the small amount of ash in the bottom of the cook chamber, re-foiled the drip pan, cleaned the grill, put a good handful of pellets in fire pot and reassembled things. Fired it up and it came up to 400F without issue and held steady. I think life is good again.
As an observation, while there really wasn’t a huge amount of pellet dust to be removed, the auger really doesn’t move whatever there is out so it will eventually accumulate. I use Bear Mountain Hickory pellets mostly and find them to be relatively clean, but there is usually a small amount of dust in the bottom of the bag. As a result, I have quit pouring the pellets directly from the bag to the hopper, especially when the bag gets nearly empty. Instead, I bought one of these…
https://www.amazon.com/WINCO-FBM-32R-Mini-Basket-Silver/dp/B07P2K7NN4/ref=sr_1_12_sspa?crid=29PHO9NW6CBLZ&keywords=coarse+sifter&qid=1704243657&sprefix=coarse+sifter,aps,168&sr=8-12-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&th=1
…to scoop pellets and leave the dust behind. Works great for me. YMMV
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