I finally bit the bullet today and spent the afternoon taking apart my pellet grill. It has really sucked not being able to fire it up and make steaks at will. To offset my pain, I suggested to Wife that we would get a fire going on our old charcoal grill and she could make our meats while I worked on dismantling the pellet grill to find what the problem is. That worked out pretty good, and before nighttime I had taken it apart and removed the parts I wanted to get to.
It was one of those days, we left the house with the idea of eating lunch somewhere, but when we got out to Buda, I kind of wanted Chicken Express, the line was long, so I had joked about going to IHOP and Wife liked the idea. We went in and it was supposed to be a thirty minute wait, but I couldn't do it. I guess it has been awhile since we have been in a full restaurant, but I did not enjoy the intensity of a filled building and the couple of kids crying their freaking brains out. While we were waiting, a few other parents with more shitty kids went in, and I did the math real quick, and figured those kids would be crying while we tried to eat. Baby A was not comfortable either with people sitting on the long sofa in the waiting area next to him. These people aren't very good with the 6ft spacing thing. We left and for a minute got in line again at Chicken Express, but then Wife said "it's 2:00pm, why don't we just go to the HEB, get food to grill and go home and start the fire?" That sounded like the best idea, I was already feeling like I was going to have to poop after eating, so there would have been no HEB if we picked up the chicken, I don't know where we would have eaten it. Either way, we went to HEB and then headed home.
Taking apart the pellet grill's auger is easy as I have already done it half a dozen times, but getting to the burn box where the ignitor coil is proved to be much more difficult. If the grill was new, I could more easily have seen the different screws and worked from there, but at this point, there is so much soot and ash and black grime that it was very hard to figure anything out. I used a bunch of Youtube videos to figure out how to remove the middle part, which was different than what I was thinking in my head. I honestly am not sure if the problem is with the internal temperature probe or the ignitor coil, but based on the ER2 and ER5 messages, it is one or the other. Fortunately, the temperature probe was very easy to remove, I hadn't noticed it attached to the wall of the grill, or I saw it but didn't realize it was a temperature probe. I found both parts on Amazon, the probe for $11 and the ignitor coil came in a two pack for $21.99, so I will have a back up for next time. Again, I am unsure if this is the problem, but everything else in the grill is just metal frame, unless it's the computer, but I don't think it is that. Maybe the clean in itself is enough to bring it back to normal working order.
This poor grill has been working overtime, as I was using it 4-6 times a week since August. I was not surprised it stopped working, leaving it on for twelve hours at a time since like overkill, but that is what a brisket requires. That is bad enough, although the temperature stays around 250, grilling steaks during the week is a lot more hot, I usually set the temp at 450 for that. The ignitor coil was a little worn around the tip, so hopefully all this maintenance is all it will require. If this doesn't fix it, I already have eyes on my next grill. I saw one that is half pellet grill and half gas grill, that sounds interesting. Add that I already have a charcoal and we even have an old electric George Foreman style and I could have all the different types of outdoor cooking at my disposal. By the way, I have been buying extra bags of charcoal like I said I would to keep in the garage for emergencies. I believe I am up to like 5-6 bags of charcoal lying around the house. I still have to set up a space in the garage for them and set up my emergency stash which we figured we need after going through the freeze.
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