Hi there
bit Of an intro I am a very excited owner of the 640 pellet smoker I bought from a dealer pre owned yesterday. It was manufactured 3-29-18. I used it yesterday with no issues but I started a brisket last night and late morning I had a sequence of events. I moved the smoker out from the garage door and it came unplugged. I plugged it back in and hit start adjusted the temp back to 225 again. Shortly after I looked out the window to a apparent flare up went out to find my thermotech probes where all ruined from the flames and the grease had caught fire. I took the meet out scraped the grease and assuming the act of restarting a hot smoker over loaded it with pellets causing it to overheat. (Guessing this is all new to me this is my first smoker). Ones I cleaned the fire box out of pellets and reset the meet I started the grill but at this point it seems to run full bore and the temp wants to just go up and up so I have propped the door open to maintain a lower temp to try and finish this cook and I assume it is the thermocouple. Questions are. Does a pre owned unit maintain coverage for 3 years and does it in fact sound like the thermocouple. The controller knows it’s supposed to be cooler but it just runs away anyway due to the fact it’s showing the step down animation and a high temp.
No expert here but have had thermocoupler problems more than once. For your best answers give customer service a call...in this day and age of covid response is a little sketchy and you might even have to go through sales to catch someone.
I will however throw my 2 cents in.
1) if the pit was not shut down for at least 20 seconds in between unplugging and plugging back in the brain did not have time to reset
2) if the pit was unplugged for too long a time it the pellets might have cooled off and at that point the pellets were building up that led to a flare up
As far as the thermocoupler yes after a period of time buildup on the thermocoupler itself can be a problem if not kept clean or if during the flare up there was an excess of splatter from grease it could have an immediate problem.
If you have a reading that keeps going up and the ladders are showing that is trying to go down or visa versa, it does sound like the thermocoupler is shot.
Either way, call customer service. If its a thermocoupler...buy two...just for these type circumstances so you will never be without during a cook. One other thought...once you have a couple hours of smoking and have a problem like this the smoke flavor is already there, you can finish in the oven inside.
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