I'm cooking for a family reunion and the readout did not come on. It dropped pellets but did not light. Turned off and messed with the switch, now it comes on and because it has loaded a lot of pellets it is having a raging fire! Oh, what fun.....
Oops. Sorry I didn't get to you sooner. We are at a BBQ competition, so was unable to respond right away.
Well, it is not getting up to temp. Been running for 2 hours and is only at 270° it is set to 375° I guess it is time to move the 6 racks of ribs to my gas grill. Every time I decide to use this Yoder it is some problem.
I never leave the cooker plugged in. Tomorrow I will clean the cooker and see if it will work properly. I did not think to clean out the unburnt pellets when it did not start. I ended up cooking on my old gas grill, This has been a frustrating day. I think I am seriously thinking of selling this pellet grill. Grilling should not be this problematic.
This is the procedure I have been using since early 2012: download/Best%20Practice%20and%20how%20to/Recommend%20procedure%20for%20starting%20up%20a%20Yoder%20pellet%20cooker.pdf I still do this even after burning through over 3 tons of pellets.
My igniter didn't fire up the pellets once. I opened it up, checked it out, removed most of the pellets, put a handful back in the firepot, used a micro hobby butane torch to start the pellets and then put the diffuser on. Then restarted the unit, worked great. After the cook I checked the igniter by taking all the pellets out and running the auger to clean it out. Started it up, the igniter worked fine, nice and red hot. That was 2 years ago, hasn't done it again. Well, ummmm, yes it did happen one other time. Once I cleaned the cooker and forgot to put the firepot back in. After 10 min I was wondering why no heat/smoke, then saw the firepot on the table. Had a mess of pellets for sure inside.
I always clean out the firepot and vacuum up the ashes in the cooker every time before I cook. That's why I just ordered the new diffuser with the removable door.
This has never happened to me but I am very aware that you must clean the cooker EACH cook. I have a small dedicated shop vac on my patio for my cooker. It gets vacuumed throughly and checked over before each cook. At first it was time consuming but now that I have cooked many times it doesn't take long at all. A pellet cooker is more maintenance then a gas grill but it's so worth it and as you gain more and more cooks it becomes "normal".
I hope that you choose to stick with the Yoder, if you follow the steps and are diligent with the maintenance I think you'll have a great experience!
New to pellet grilling/smoking
YS-640 ON ORANGE COMP CART
Thanks JF, I completely clean the grill after I cook. It is stored with a cover on it under an awning. The computer apparently malfunctioned. The readout did not come on, but the fans and augur were running. My mistake was nor thinking to clean out the unburnt pellets once I got it running. This caused a large fire and almost a hopper fire. (I caught it in time) This grill has been a real pain. I really wanted to love it, but I am ready to move on. Anyone in the Houston area want to buy a like new YS640 with the competition cart?
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