When I had my Traeger, I scraped the ceiling to find anything that would tame temperature fluctuations, cleaning the RTD being one of them. The end result - I found it made no difference it it were shiny or
had a build up on it.
Later after I got my Memphis Pro, I was in contact with Memphis with questions, a lot were carryover problems or quirks I had had with the Traeger..One was about keeping the RTD clean. Their response was
they had done testing, clean vs dirty and found no difference. Their advice was to give the RTD a gentle wipe @ clean up, and not to use any kind of chemical cleaner on it..I adhered to their advice resulting in
the last 3 years of spot on temperature readings and normal heat up times..Obviously, heat soak times will be longer in colder temps for any pit.
Thinking about it, IF the Rtd was HEAVILY built up with crud, it would act as an insulator only slowing heat transfer to the internal coil. It would have to be a rather large build up.