My Texas Elite started flaming out during my last three cooks.  Just a little background.  I bought the grill last Memorial Day weekend at a Costco roadshow.  A few months later a Savannah Stoker v4 was added along with a Smoke Daddy auger motor.  The grill was pushed pretty hard over the summer and into the fall.  I am talking about roughly nine briskets, several dozen racks of St Louis ribs, and a bunch of pull pork.  All of the cooks last year were pretty uneventful.

In January, I cooked a brisket for my wife's office winter party.  The brisket was smoked at 190 deg F for four hours and the temperature was increased to 240 deg F.  My wife noticed an hour later that the grill stopped smoking.  The SSv4 was in shutdown mode.  I restarted the grill and the same thing happened an hour later.  Last weekend we cooked St Louis ribs and the same thin happened.

It turns out that all of the shutdowns were caused by interruptions of the pellet supply.  The hopper was 1/4 full but pellets were not feeding into fire pot.  The SSv4 will attempt to re-ignite  the fire if there is a large temperature drop.  However, it will give up after 12 minutes if the fire does not come back and proceeds to run the shutdown program.  I caught it doing this today on a dry run. I checked the hopper and pellets covered the auger opening. The grill, drip slide and heat deflector were pulled.  My fire pot only contained two pellets.  I powered up the grill again and it ran fine.  It was as if the pellet hopper ceased to provide pellets to the auger until the hopper was disturbed. 

Has anyone else seen this before in the winter?  My pellets are standard issue Traeger hickory that are stored indoors.  The pellets in the hopper are dry or at least appear to be.               

I am not quite sure what you are saying...but it sounds like the pellets are feeding and a cavity is being formed.  At some point, maybe do to surface tension, the pellets refuse to slide down each other, you have pellets on all 4 sides, but they don't go into the hopper, just a big cavity.  I have found it is usually a high concentration of wood dust in the pellets and the sides of the hopper might need a shot of food grade silicon

My Traeger used to do that but now I just keep the hopper full. I did once spray the hopper with silicon and that also seemed to help (make sure the silicon is dry before adding pellets).

Two occurrences in my life.  Both were funnel out issues. Adding a hopper extension didn't help.

Pellets will stick to the sides of the hopper. It's physics. You can try ideas, and best of luck to you. It wasn't werth the bother for me.

I am not quite sure what you are saying...but it sounds like the pellets are feeding and a cavity is being formed.  At some point, maybe do to surface tension, the pellets refuse to slide down each other, you have pellets on all 4 sides, but they don't go into the hopper, just a big cavity.  I have found it is usually a high concentration of wood dust in the pellets and the sides of the hopper might need a shot of food grade silicon

A cavity is forming from what I am able to gather.  It seems odd that the problem wasn't as bad in the warmer months.  I wasn't sure why the grill was shutdown until I read the SSv4 manual and noted the 12 minute timeout after a re-ignite sequence is started.  We were blaming the dog for kicking the power cord.  Fortunately, I was able to catch the failure today.

I noted your comment on wood dust.  Is this why people build "fine" extraction contraptions?

The solution for now is to use my Maverick set with one the probes monitoring chamber temperature.  If it drops below the low limit my alarm will alert me and I can stir the hopper to keep the pellets coming.

I figured this one out.  It seems that party guests must be advised that the pellet hopper is not a trash can.  The pellet hopper was emptied yesterday and a very beat-up piece of paper towel was found in the mix.  It must have been in there for a while because it was getting pretty brown and was blending in pretty well with the pellets.  I'm surprised I didn't see it while pushing pellets aside to check the auger status.     

I see that my brother was at one of your parties...