Hello,
This subject came up in another thread. I would prefer to put these details into their own thread. Dclord provided a good suggestion for the replacement part since FireCraft doesn’t exist anymore. He compared several igniters and found that one was Englander was long enough, the proper strength, and had wires long enough to reach the controller. I bought a new one for less than $20, shipping included.
I took the inside of the smoker apart, and vacuumed out the ashes. This is what the firebox looks like.
Zooming in you can see the first screw to remove.
Next I removed the side panel on the pellet hopper. This is the access to the controller and most of the functional parts of the unit. Notice that you can see all the way through to the firebox where I placed a piece of yellow paper in the second picture.
I didn’t take a picture of these, but if you look under the pellet hopper there are two screws, side by side. These two also hold the igniter in place. Remove those and now disconnect the two wires that come from the igniter. One goes to the controller, and the other goes to a wire connector joining this wire to another wire. I didn’t trace this connection, but I believe it goes to the controller. The wires are both white so I don’t know if it makes any difference later when I went to connect the wires from the new igniter.
Next, I removed the old igniter from the metal housing it’s installed in. There are two screws that hold this housing closed. These were tough to unscrew and dclord mentioned having to drill his out. I persevered and removed the two screws. Be careful here. There are 3 ceramic spacers in the housing. They are prone to being broken if dropped a great distance.
The Englander igniter comes with a collar attached. I loosened the set screw and removed this. I don’t know if this was necessary. The Englander igniter also has a metal washer welded in place next to the original location of the metal collar. I did not attempt to remove the metal washer. This is why I don’t know if the collar needed to be removed. Anyway, I put the new igniter into the bottom half of the igniter housing and experimented with several combinations for the ceramic spacers. In the next picture you can see how I placed them. Two are in solidly, but the third is loose enough to slide in and out. I kept all three together in case I need them for a future repair. I put the two screws back to hold the igniter housing closed, and put the igniter housing back into the firebox.
Then I ran the wires through the firebox and back to the controller. I used my fish wire to help them through a rubber port at the top/back of the firebox. I attached the wires to the empty connectors. Again, both wires are white, so I don’t know if it makes a difference which one gets connected to the igniter connector on the controller, or the other wire connector. Finally, I just had to put all of the screws back.
I started with the screws to attach the igniter to the smoker. One screw in the firebox first. This made it easier to lineup the other two screws under the pellet hopper. I used an Allen Key to pull the back of the igniter into position so that I could get the first screw into it. The second screw under here was much easier after getting the first one in.
Now I tested the startup. I plugged it back in to power. Sure enough, the smoker fed pellets and the igniter started the fire. I let it run for about 20 minutes to verify that it wouldn’t throw the GFCI outlet. Then I shut it down again to close the side panel and put all of the parts back into the cooking area.
It was an easy repair. I had replaced two or three Traeger igniters in the past, and this was easier to complete.
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Topic: Igniter Replacement (Read 8164 times)