Had a big cookout here at our place yesterday and planned to use all three of my pellet cookers.  Fired up the "little" Traeger and my homemade UDS pellet cooker on Sunday night and got the brisket and pork butts going.  Woke up at 6am to start prepping 9 racks of spare ribs and thats when things went a little sideways.

Went to fire up the "big" Traeger, which I have been cooking on regularly lately, and the second I turned the dial from the off position the GFCI popped.  Unplugged the "big" Traeger and reset the GFCI so that the other two cookers would keep going.  I have ran all three off of the same circuit many times with no trouble, I just don't start them all at the same time.

With the power switch in the off position, I plugged the "big" Traeger into a different GFCI protected circuit and this time to tripped the GFCI immediately, didn't have to move the power switch.  I had a lot of meat to cook, and didn't have time to trouble shoot, but it's pretty clear that I have a short somewhere.

Yes you do have some work to do.. I would start by disconnecting all the control wires, plug in the unit and see what happens. Then turn it on. If the CFIC trips, it's the controller, unless somehow the power cord is shorted or grounded..If the CFGI hasn't tripped, plug in one circuit at a time until you get a trip...   Most of the time it's the hot rod, grounding out. For that to happen the circuit has to be energized - the first 4 min. after startup, or a grounder hot rod being constantly fed thru a faulty controller.
Darn those electrical systems.

Unplug glow plug first,then auger,then fan

Plug into a non GFCI outlet and see what happens. If it runs and does not trip the circuit breaker then it's not a direct short. Likely one of the components mentioned already is failing or has completely failed.

And the winner is the hot rod.  Sort of what I anticipated.  In the 6+ years I have been using pellet cookers this is the first one that I have had go bad.

 Glad you found the problem.. Now, on with the show.

Yep, when they short it's a lotta amp going through those.  My Yoder says 5 amps for 5 min.  Major power if shorted.  Glad you found the issue quickly, now back to your cooking!  You make some fine food!

Ordered a replacement, that actually got hear a few days ago, but I just got around to installing it yesterday and now the "big" Traeger is working like a charm again.

Surprisingly easy to change actually.  I half expected that it would be a chore to get the wire fed through to the burn pot but it wasn't.  Took about 5 minutes.

 Good news. Glad it went well.

How could it have tripped with the controller in the off position?  No doubt it's was the igniter but that doesn't make sense to me.