Struggling to reach temp

Dassman5 · Sep 11, 2020

AHoneyman said:
Guys, I just noticed that they snuck a firmware update in sometime. I am at 4042 and I have been having temp increase problems. Version 4035 worked better for me, I believe. Take a look and see what version that you have now. The Weber web site says the most current is 4035. There is a disconnect somewhere.

Will check tomorrow when I get home.

AHoneyman · Sep 11, 2020

Here are some photos. First, immediately after the SF said I had reached temp. It was another 45 minutes to get there. Second, this was within two minutes after I moved from 200 to 250. The SF said I was there. Third, two hours later, it had not reached 250 yet but had consistently said it was already there. It has moved 22 degrees. This is a problem, folks.

Dassman5 · Sep 12, 2020

AHoneyman said:
Here are some photos. First, immediately after the SF said I had reached temp. It was another 45 minutes to get there. Second, this was within two minutes after I moved from 200 to 250. The SF said I was there. Third, two hours later, it had not reached 250 yet but had consistently said it was already there. It has moved 22 degrees. This is a problem, folks.

View attachment 1802 View attachment 1803 View attachment 1804

Ouch...not good. Assuming that the permanent probe in the unit is clean and not “gunked” up, and pellet feed is not interrupted, I agree. Possibly either: the permanent grill probe is bad, firmware is corrupted, or a bad controller.

abmet · Sep 12, 2020

Mine is still 4035. I even left my phone out there for 20 minutes and shutdown couple times and no update. I haven’t used mine this week since has been raining.

AHoneyman · Sep 12, 2020

Dassman5 said:
Ouch...not good. Assuming that the permanent probe in the unit is clean and not “gunked” up, and pellet feed is not interrupted, I agree. Possibly either: the permanent grill probe is bad, firmware is corrupted, or a bad controller.

I wanted to check the possibility of a hardware issue like Dassman5 mentioned. I did a run today to 450 (done mowing the lawn and bored). At the start (80 degrees) and up to 400, the SF controller and the air temp probe were within 10 degrees of each other. At 400 degrees, the SF controller moved up to 450 quickly and said that I was at temp. The air probe was still at the 400-402 range. This occurred within 18 minutes from the start. Obviously, the unit can heat up. I am now 45 minutes into the heat up and the SF controller is a rock at 450. The air probe is bouncing around 420. I am shutting down to save pellets for a brisket tonight. It seems to me that the firmware has over compensated for overshoots of temperature and now struggles to get to the final desired temp. This will effect cook times for short sears and the like. Just my opinion.

Dassman5 · Sep 12, 2020

AHoneyman said:
I wanted to check the possibility of a hardware issue like Dassman5 mentioned. I did a run today to 450 (done mowing the lawn and bored). At the start (80 degrees) and up to 400, the SF controller and the air temp probe were within 10 degrees of each other. At 400 degrees, the SF controller moved up to 450 quickly and said that I was at temp. The air probe was still at the 400-402 range. This occurred within 18 minutes from the start. Obviously, the unit can heat up. I am now 45 minutes into the heat up and the SF controller is a rock at 450. The air probe is bouncing around 420. I am shutting down to save pellets for a brisket tonight. It seems to me that the firmware has over compensated for overshoots of temperature and now struggles to get to the final desired temp. This will effect cook times for short sears and the like. Just my opinion.

I agree with your opinion. There is a vast temperature range that Weber is attempting to cover, and spending too much time controlling overshoots tells me they still have some fine tuning to do.

Bruno · Sep 13, 2020

I ran the SF twice yesterday, once to 450 to clean it up and make sure I don’t miss anything when it shut down last weekend from over heating and once to cook.

It shot straight to 450 on the clean, shut it down, 3 hours later set it to 500 to do some lamb and the bumped to 600 to get after a steak.
Worked pretty good the whole day, but when I switched the lamb for the steak and set it to 500 it dropped fast to about 425 and then climbed to 600.
I should use my Thermoworks Smoke more to monitor these things but I’m just cooking. Guys like DMan are the smart ones and I enjoy reading their thoughts on the how’s and why’s.

Grouchy · Sep 14, 2020

I had the same issue with inconstant temps , what I did was emptied the hopper, pulled the auger out vacuum the inside and did the same on the fire pot ... I had a lot of dust build up inside the chute and auger, seemed the pellets weren't dropping correctly so my temp kept going up and down. So I started to filter all the pellets to remove all the dust, store the cleaned up pellets in buckets. Picture shows how much dust i removed from half a bag, just imagine going through a few bags, it can build up quick.