Hello. I purchased the Member's Mark 36" with Smoke box and Induction plate from Sam's Club about four weeks ago. I've already had to replace the auger motor. Today I noticed it kept a steady temp at 225. I adjusted the temperature dial to 400. After 10 minutes the temp fell from 225 to 185. Then a ton of smoke about 5 mins later. I started pulling food off the racks. 15 mins later temp went to 425 or so. At that point I just turned it off and let the fan blow. For the record, I did clean it and vacuum it out before starting this session. What happened?
by HungryHippopatamus
1 Comment
Was the firepot clean when you started? How long was it at 225° before you adjusted the temp up? Is 400° the max temp that grill says it supports?
I don’t have this model and haven’t seen the internals but here’s my best guess…
The controller likely commanded too high an auger setting and it buried the currently burning pellets. That snuffed the fire and dropped your temps for a bit. If 400° is the max temp that out says it supports, then the auger was likely running 100% and might have pushed too many pellets thru.
Then they slowly smouldered for a good bit producing all that smoke. When you opened the lid to move the food you introduced more oxygen into the fire and cleared the smoke allowing the pellets to ignite and burn cleaner so it took off to the 425° you noted.
It’s hard to know exactly what happened.
It’s possible there was too much ash in the pot to allow clean combustion of all the additional pellets, or the fan/oxygen flow was somehow obstructed. It’s possible the pellet dump was commanded when the controller was on a temp downswing and it overloaded the pot for the amount of fuel that was currently burning. Or it could simply be a controller programming error to dump too many pellets for that particular change in temp.
If you started with a clean firepot, perhaps try a more gradual climb to 400°. Like 225°>325° (let it stabilize)>400° and see if that works better.
Ultimately, it’s a $500 grill with a lot of features for that price point. There’s bound to be some slight compromises on it’s function. I notice the Sam’s Club posting makes no mention of an actual PID controller, so it likely doesn’t have the fine granular adjustments programmed in that a PID controller is capable of.