And..... that's all she wrote for now......<sigh>

[Mr. X]

Nope, I just received the 5 bags I orderred from Weber. Another thing is…when I changed out my auger, there was pellet dust pack so hard in the bottom of the auger, it wasn’t funny. I think the only way around that would to sifting the pellets, which I won’t be doing. There is pellet dust in all pellet brands. Could be that was part of the flame out temp drop problem all along. Might just be, need to take auger out and make sure it’s clean every so often.

i have noticed this dust too. I have taken out my auger 2x and found this to be present. Removing it every now and then seems to be the best answer.

 

[kaptain_zero]

Now the only thing to make it a category 5, is the Caronavirus…jk dont wish that on anyone. It will all work out @kaptain_zero . Then you will be trucking along making beautiful food.

Thanks, I just hope the smoker gets fixed before grilling season is over! If we're lucky, we'll have 6 months of BBQ weather (I worked outside for 30 years... I ain't BBQing in -40 weather).

 

[KevinD]

A Weber CS person told me he shop vacs his auger and pellet hopper every 10-12 hours so I do that. I also shop vac the grill itself after every 5 hours of cooking. Use drip pans on most cooks as well. No dust or grease = no fires!

 

[Goneincognito]

A Weber CS person told me he shop vacs his auger and pellet hopper every 10-12 hours so I do that. I also shop vac the grill itself after every 5 hours of cooking. Use drip pans on most cooks as well. No dust or grease = no fires!

Yup.. Drip pans are very handy.
I clean the dust out of the chamber after every cook and clean the auger every other cook.
It takes 5 minutes to empty the hopper, pull the auger out to get all the dust and stuff out (sometimes it doesn't need it but do it anyway) then put it all back so its not a big deal to me.
In an ideal world should we have to? No. But I'd rather do that than deal with any potential issues from not doing it.

 

[laketater]

Assembled the EX4 yesterday, noted it had the steeper ramp installed from the factory, so it looked like the VER 2 has all the updates in it..... short story, no it doesn't.......<groan>.

It was quite gusty outside yesterday so I held off on the burn in until today. Took it out of the garage, loaded up pellets, selected 600F and hit the button. First smoke, then temps steadily climbed to 510F and then started dropping. I did hear some odd "gronking" noise from the grill, but wasn't sure what was causing it. It turns out that pellets had stopped dropping and thus the flame out. I took the back panel off the auger housing and when I looked up inside, sure enough... the original 2 piece auger chute. So.... it's off to waste time on the phone with Weber warranty to get this sorted out. The noise was likely a jammed auger. As it is Friday and I had my heart set on some smoked food, I'm going to clear the chute and see if I can get it working long enough for a short cook.

Christian aka

Kaptain "Why me?" Zero

Hey Kap. When I first got mine going we noticed the pellets were not being delivered. We discovered inconsistent lengths in the pellets and with the guard on the pellet inlet it was stopping up the entry. Check to see if the guard is in place and if it is, remove it and you might be off to the races!
That was just the start of all my woes and still fighting the darn thing even after all of the updates. The latest has happened twice where the temp change does not happen and it keeps putting pellets in, the fan runs full bore, trying to get the temp up, despite it dropping. Then all of the pellets start smoking like a cheech and chong car, then fire which gets so hot it melts the glow plug boot and renders the glow plug useless. I cannot figure out why they cannot find a programmer who understands temperature algorithms. Not rocket science.
Anyway, hope my little suggestion gets you smoking. Good luck!
Regards,
Laketater

 

[Mr. X]

Yup.. Drip pans are very handy.
I clean the dust out of the chamber after every cook and clean the auger every other cook.
It takes 5 minutes to empty the hopper, pull the auger out to get all the dust and stuff out (sometimes it doesn't need it but do it anyway) then put it all back so its not a big deal to me.
In an ideal world should we have to? No. But I'd rather do that than deal with any potential issues from not doing it.

Oddly both of the times I have taken the auger out and put back in it has resulted in flame out scenarios. I think the machine gives up after not getting any pellets in the hopper quick enough.

 

[Goneincognito]

Oddly both of the times I have taken the auger out and put back in it has resulted in flame out scenarios. I think the machine gives up after not getting any pellets in the hopper quick enough.

Definitely possible but I have not ran into that issue..... yet.

 

[kaptain_zero]

UPDATE:

The tech from the BBQ store just left. My EX4 is cheerfully running at 600F on the pellets I purchased in the first place. It WAS the two piece auger chute causing my problems.

The tech said they had sent back 11 of the Gen 1 EX4s and he's had to replace the auger chute on 3 of the Gen 2 models they got in replacement as Weber had not done the full update, just the hopper slide.

So..... after the burn in, it looks like I'll be making something decent to eat this weekend!

 

[bbqking]

UPDATE:

The tech from the BBQ store just left. My EX4 is cheerfully running at 600F on the pellets I purchased in the first place. It WAS the two piece auger chute causing my problems.

The tech said they had sent back 11 of the Gen 1 EX4s and he's had to replace the auger chute on 3 of the Gen 2 models they got in replacement as Weber had not done the full update, just the hopper slide.

So..... after the burn in, it looks like I'll be making something decent to eat this weekend!

Well…all’s well, that ends well. We’ll be waiting for well grilled/smoked foods. And we’ll taken pictures, as well as recipes

 

[kaptain_zero]

Too busy snarfing!

 

[Dassman5]

I do not live close to any retailers that handle Lumberjack pellets. Any online source charges shipping and radically raises the price. Order 3 bags from Weber @$16.99 and the shipping is free. Can anybody beat that shipped directly to you?

While not shipped directly, we have a local garden supply store near us that is a very large Weber dealer. They routinely sell all of the Weber pellets for $15/ bag.
However, since they also give my wife a coupon worth $1 dollar for each $10 she spends— and she spends a lot — for flowers, shrubs, trees, garden supplies and Weber products, making the true cost of Weber pellets generally much lower.

 

[kaptain_zero]

So much for the EX4. I did grill some steaks the other day and it did do the 40 minute burn in at 600F, but today I got up early to toss on a rather large chuck roast to smoke at 275. It only lasted about 25 minutes and the temps nosedived until I got the flame out warning. I went through the shutdown and start up proceedure and again it failed. So I took all the bits out of the cooker and watched a second startup attempt and this time I could see the auger wasn't turning at all.

Emptied the hopper and pulled out the auger and found what you see in the photo.....<groan> I found one of the thee pieces of the cotter pin in the burn pot, the other two sailed right through to the ash drawer. I'm not sure if there's another piece missing and if so where it went. I may chuck the pellets from the hopper, just to be safe, once I get this fixed.

So now I get to sink my teeth into an electric oven roast.......

 

[JpsBBQ]

So much for the EX4. I did grill some steaks the other day and it did do the 40 minute burn in at 600F, but today I got up early to toss on a rather large chuck roast to smoke at 275. It only lasted about 25 minutes and the temps nosedived until I got the flame out warning. I went through the shutdown and start up proceedure and again it failed. So I took all the bits out of the cooker and watched a second startup attempt and this time I could see the auger wasn't turning at all.

Emptied the hopper and pulled out the auger and found what you see in the photo.....<groan> I found one of the thee pieces of the cotter pin in the burn pot, the other two sailed right through to the ash drawer. I'm not sure if there's another piece missing and if so where it went. I may chuck the pellets from the hopper, just to be safe, once I get this fixed.

So now I get to sink my teeth into an electric oven roast.......

View attachment 3939

Well, one thing we know for sure, based upon your expert advice, is that it’s not the crap pellets. Yep. Carry on.

 

[Goneincognito]

Remember those problems I said you may run into if you choose to use larger pellets?

This is one of the problems.
I'm not surprised it happened but I am surprised it happened as quick as it did.

I have seen it happen when pellet dust builds up also but its too soon for that to be the case with you.

 

[kaptain_zero]

Just a quick update. Unit is working after a second visit by the tech. I have modified my auger to prevent it from committing ritual suicide again. I plan to run it for a month or so before passing on the modification to my dealer who promised to pass it on to Weber.

It turned out the age of the pellets were part of the issue. Excessive age allows them to crumble which lead to the auger failure, but the dulled surface allows them to bridge in the narrow tapering auger chute, causing flameouts. If I can get fresh pellets (shiny, slippery surface) from that manufacturer, I'd be happy to use them. I'm currently using some fresh Weber pellets (skid had just arrived at the store), but I'll be investigating other brands, provided I can confirm they are fresh, as I don't care for the smoke flavor I'm getting from the Weber pellets.