I swear I would have thrown this grill away and just bought a new one, but Boy and Baby A spent their good money to help me get this one for my birthday, so I want it to last me more than half a year. The first time I left some pellets in the auger tube (feeds pellets from hopper (container on side of grill) to burn box (burn box is a small 3-4inch diameter heavy metal cup in middle of grill where the pellets fall in and get heated up by an ignitor coil to burn)). The pellets then were partially burned in auger tube and maybe got moisture on them and subsequently swelled up and hardened. It took a considerable amount of force to break the auger loose. I then attached the auger to my drill (the auger does look like a giant drill bit and the pellets ride in the spaces in between from hopper to burn box) and forced it to spin through the hardened grime and soot. This lock forced the first auger motor to burn up as it tried to turn against too strong of a force. I understand this now, so I make sure and remove all the pellets after I finish cooking (the hopper has a trap door underneath and the pellets all fall into a plastic bucket for safekeeping and reuse). Since I realized this motor is finicky, I ordered a couple of extras and have two ready to go for the future (they only cost $24.99, I did a free one when I called Oklahoma Joe and told them what happened). Turns out, this is the same motor the Traeger grills use.
Recently, I had gotten an ER2 and an ER5 error while grilling. I could get around the errors by turning off and on the grill and it would continue, but the problem was there. At a certain point, I think the grill had enough and it just didn't want to work. I looked those error codes up online and they indicated that the problem was either the temperature probe was faulty or the ignitor coil had gone bad. These are expendable items I now know. The good thing is that the temperature probe was like $11.99 and the ignitor coil was a pair for around $22.99. It took a little bit of effort to open up the grill all the way down to get to the ignitor coil, I didn't even know there were so many screws on this thing. I changed them out before we went on vacation, but I didn't get a chance to really run it until tonight (Sunday) and from what I can tell, we are back to normal. At this point, I now also have an extra ignitor to add to the auger motor and I will probably order another temperature probe to have a back-up. The only other moving part to worry about is the fan that forces air into the unit and that fan is around $20, so I will probably have to replace it at some point. I have run the grill hard, I cook on it almost every day and is one of the main reasons I had lost so much weight, making all our lunch meals during the week on it and then meat on the weekend. The grill overall was $600, so if changing out a part for $10-20 bucks keeps it going, then I will do that. The body of the grill still looks new, so that is another thing to keep in mind.
By the way, I smoked/grilled a tiny brisket flat (the flat part of the brisket) for about 2.5 hours and then grilled some chicken thighs, some pork, some sausages, and even mollejas along with some jalapeno bombers and everything came out okay. Well, the brisket was a little tough but it was still good. The grill was on for a good 3 hours and change starting at 300 and then I cranked it up to 400, I didn't see any errors, so to me that means problem solved, for now.
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