Bullseye Temps are all over the place

[shiner]

Did my initial burn in this morning at 400 for just over an hour and a half. I had planned on letting it cool down, then doing a big Costco vac pac of boneless chicken thighs. However my wife was craving hot dogs so I threw some on the Bullseye and cooked them up real fast. After they were done I lowered the temp to 250, came inside, and ate a couple of hot dogs.

When I went back out the actual temp was reading 106, and kept dropping until it hit 99. I opened the lid, pulled out the grate and the deflector to find the fire pot overflowing with pellets. I turned the grill off, emptied the fire pot, then restarted the grill after about 10 minutes and set it at 250. It started back up fine and the temp was climbing so I came in to prep the chicken thighs. About 10 minutes later my wife says "There is freaking smoke everywhere" so I got out to look at the grill and it is engulfed in smoke, so much so I couldn't even see the temp controls. I raised the lid and let the smoke disperse, when the smoke finally cleared enough that I could see, the actual temp was reading 551 degrees. WTF?

I turned the grill back off, let it cool for a bit, took the grate and deflector out, no overflowing pellets so not sure what in the world was going on. I restarted the grill and set it at 250 again. It started back up and made its way to 250, then finally up to 307 as I set and watched it. I'm sitting there wondering what in the hell is going on when the temp starts dropping. Ok, no biggie I bet it settles back at 250. Nope! Instead it kept dropping until it hit 177, then slowly began to climb again. It finally hit 255 and mostly stayed there, dropping occasionally to 248, which I don't consider a big deal. The wild temp swings do concern me however. Has anyone else seen anything like this with their Bullseye?

 

[shiner]

So far, so good after the earlier craziness. I'm doing the third batch of thighs and it has been holding between 248 and 256 with no further temp swings.

 

[Jarrow]

I had temp swings once when I was at the beginning of cooking a brisket at 200. It did the same thing, dropped temp and kept filling the pot with pellets. Other than that I haven’t had any wild swings like that. Hopefully that’s the only one you experience.

 

[TB1960]

Did my initial burn in this morning at 400 for just over an hour and a half. I had planned on letting it cool down, then doing a big Costco vac pac of boneless chicken thighs. However my wife was craving hot dogs so I threw some on the Bullseye and cooked them up real fast. After they were done I lowered the temp to 250, came inside, and ate a couple of hot dogs.

When I went back out the actual temp was reading 106, and kept dropping until it hit 99. I opened the lid, pulled out the grate and the deflector to find the fire pot overflowing with pellets. I turned the grill off, emptied the fire pot, then restarted the grill after about 10 minutes and set it at 250. It started back up fine and the temp was climbing so I came in to prep the chicken thighs. About 10 minutes later my wife says "There is freaking smoke everywhere" so I got out to look at the grill and it is engulfed in smoke, so much so I couldn't even see the temp controls. I raised the lid and let the smoke disperse, when the smoke finally cleared enough that I could see, the actual temp was reading 551 degrees. WTF?

I turned the grill back off, let it cool for a bit, took the grate and deflector out, no overflowing pellets so not sure what in the world was going on. I restarted the grill and set it at 250 again. It started back up and made its way to 250, then finally up to 307 as I set and watched it. I'm sitting there wondering what in the hell is going on when the temp starts dropping. Ok, no biggie I bet it settles back at 250. Nope! Instead it kept dropping until it hit 177, then slowly began to climb again. It finally hit 255 and mostly stayed there, dropping occasionally to 248, which I don't consider a big deal. The wild temp swings do concern me however. Has anyone else seen anything like this with their Bullseye?

I had the exact same experience with my new Bullseye this week, while trying to set it to 225. It would hold the 225 for a while, then climb to 300 and then drop to 150.
I called Recteq customer service and they had me adjust the Feed Rate from 3.0 to 9.5. I haven't had a chance to check the new Feed Rate setting with a long term cook yet to see if it will hold the 225 degrees.
Also, I am waiting on a high temp air probe from ThermoWorks to make sure the 225 cook temperature is accurate.

 

[shiner]

Another cook that was consistently inconsistent.

Started the Bullseye with the intention of cooking some brats, a little over 5 pounds, at 225 for about 45 minutes, then finish them off at a high temp for some good grill marks. Set the temp to 225, came up to temp quickly, but due to my experiences last weekend I decided to watch it for a bit. Held between 219 and 231 for about 20 minutes so I decided that was good enough and went inside to get the brats. When I came back out a few minutes later the temp was at 301 and rising. Well crap! I put the brats in my beer fridge in the garage and sat to watch the temps. They continued climbing to 352, then dropped slowly at first to 218 and held there for a few minutes. Next thing I know the temp is reading 178 and dropping. Bottomed out at 144, then started climbing again. Reached 262 this time, then slowly settled back to 226. I charted all this in a notebook. It stayed at 226 for a bit, then suddenly was 173, then dropped to 161, then back to 223 and held for 10 minutes. All very weird, but it seems to have settled.

I put the brats on, and the temps stayed between 218 and 226. Not bad. Grabbed a beer, temp was 252 when I came back, climbed to 351, then dropped to 150, then slowly back to 225 where it held for maybe 5 minutes, then back up to 312 quickly, then dropped to 228 and held for a bit, then down to 180 quickly. What in the world is going on. At this point I pulled the brats and put then in the oven in the house at 200 to try and save them.

I then went back outside to watch the temps of the Bullseye and it continued to bounce between a low of 140, to a high of 312. Up and down, around and around we go. I finally went inside, checked the temps of the brats and they were close to done so I heated up a cast iron to get some char on them, finished them off, and my wife and I ate.

I went back outside and the Bullseye was still doing its weird temp swings, at one point reaching 388. I decided to turn it off and let it cool down as rain was predicted to start within a couple of hours.

Is it just me, or is this bizarre behavior? At this point I can't trust the Bullseye to hold a temp and am about ready to pack it up and send it back. Does anyone have advice, or has seen anything remotely like this? I plan on calling support when I have time between meetings tomorrow, but thought I would ask here first.

 

[Waterboy]

Seems bizarre to me. I get overshoot when it starts up but once it settles in it’s fairly steady. I’ve got to think customer service will get you straightened out once you share those temp swings with them.

Once you get it fixed you’ll love the grill but I certainly understand your frustration. Give us an update when you’ve talked to RecTeq.

 

[Smagnus]

Mines pretty consistent. Runs maybe 5 degrees hotter than I set It. Call and talk to cust service- something seems off

 

[TB1960]

I received my air temp probe from ThermoWorks and went about testing the internal temp of the RT-380. I put my probe as close as I could to the RT-380 probe.
After initial warm up I set the RT-380 temp to 225. My internal temp was 25 deg low and varied +/- 35 deg, however, the RT-380 "Actual Temp" display showed 225 +/- 6 deg. This was with a Feed Rate of 7.0
Over the next 3 or 4 hours I played with the Feed Rate going from 3 to 6 to 7 to 9 to 11 to 16 and watching the internal temp. Also, I adjusted the RT-380 "Set Point" to different temperatures.
The best I could do was with a Feed Rate of 11.5. The internal temp was 25 degrees low and varied +/- 7.5 deg. This was at a Set Point of 250 deg.
Bottom line, no matter what the settings were the internal temp was always 25 deg low. I could improve temperature swings by adjusting the feed rate.

 

[Lager1829]

I had similar wild temperature swings two days in a row after months of fairly stable cook's.

I emptied the hopper then vacuumed out the visible part of the auger. There was a lot of dust. I then ran the auger in test mode until it was empty and vacuumed it from the fire pot side.

Refilled the hopper and ran the auger until pellets started dropping into the fire pot.

That did it! Back to recteq normal!

 

[PRC]

Bottom line, no matter what the settings were the internal temp was always 25 deg low. I could improve temperature swings by adjusting the feed rate.

The feed rate setting has nothing to do with temperature swings unless you are looking at the lowest temperature the grill will hold. That setting simply adjusts the minimum amount of time it feeds pellets when the controller sees the internal temperature dropping below the set temperature. The higher you set it the longer pellets are fed into the burn pot. That setting only effects the stability of the lowest temperature you can maintain and not getting flameouts.