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.
