First Smokefire problem, and a solution

[C Lewis]

So after 53 non-eventful cooks, finally, what turned out to be a small problem arose. I fired up the EX6, set the temp, got smoke, and closed the lid to heat. I went in to prep, and when I came back out, the Smokefire was still running, but the temp had not risen at all. I pulled the parts out to see the burn pot, and it was full of pellets, no flame. I went through the extremely-too-long-and-unnecessary-in-my-opinion shutdown cycle, and then emptied the burn pot. Instead of spending too much time diagnosing, as I was ready to get dinner going, I changed out the glow plug with one of the spares that came with it, added a hose clamp around the ground connection just in case it was a ground issue, and it fired right up. Ran through dinner like a champ, no further problems. I checked the original glow plug with an ohm meter, and it had the exact same resistance reading as the brand new one. Pretty certain that the cheesy ground was to blame in the flame out. I put the original glow plug back in, (with the hose clamp on), and no problems firing it up for the next cook.

If you’ve ever messed with trailer wiring, you know that just because the wire is in the connector, it is possible to not actually be connected, especially with the cheap splice and tap connectors. Furthermore, a bad ground will drive you nuts and teach the kids next store a lot of new words from the crazy man next door that is outside kicking his trailer. The hose clamp worked great, was cheap and easy, but I didn’t like the way it looked. (I’m not sure why I really cared). I decided to make it a little nicer and solid, so I used an idea similar to what I had seen somewhere on the interwebs a while back. I cut the ground wire from the terminal on the glow plug holder, stripped it, and put a large crimped ring connector on it. I put the ground wire with the ring terminal over the glow plug, and threaded a M10x1.25 jam nut down on it and snugged it up. Gives me a nice solid connection, and is still easy to change if needed.





I’m going to run a couple of higher heat cooks, then I’ll put it out and check it to make sure that there are no problems. The wire is a high heat insulation and is not easy to strip. I'm a little concerned over the frayed strands, but not too much. I may redo it and put some hi-temp shrink tube around it to finish it off. If all is well though, I’ll get some better pics. Hope this helps someone out. If you’re having a flame out, check the ground connection and throw a hose clamp around it and see if it helps. If you’re deranged like me, take the extra time to do an unnecessary additional step just to satisfy your OCD. Makes me wonder just how many of the flameout issues on the Gen1s may have just been a bad ground?

Charlie

 

[Shane - glitchy]

Nice on the fly fix. A bad glow plug ground shouldn‘t cause flameouts though. Once the pit is burning, they usually cut power to the glow plug/igniter. It could cause failures to start for sure though.

 

[C Lewis]

I did have smoke originally, but not much or for very long. I think that the glow plug went out before the pellets got to really start burning and establish a flame. I think that it was on just enough to smolder the first few pellets, then went out and was smothered by the incoming pellets.

Charlie

 

[Shane - glitchy]

I think most pellet grills are time based like 5-10 mins at the start. I am not disagreeing that your issue was the glow plug at all, just pointing out that once pit is really going, the glow plug should be off for rest of time. Flameouts an hour later should be another issue. Some grills do have re-light programming where if it thinks is there was a flameout it will fire the glow plug up again, but I think that’s a small minority and the functionality might be as dangerous as it is beneficial if you have a grill that’s been dumping pellets long enough to overflow the fire pot.