LSG 42" Pellet Smoker Crating Notification

[HawkerXP]

Welcome to the Pit!

[ofelles]

Yea they are great with customer service. When I received my Santa Maria grill they included instructions for a pellet grill. Within 30 minutes of shooting them an email I received an email with the correct instructions and a phone call apologizing.

[Saltman]

The honeymoon didn't last long after receiving the LSG Pellet Smoker. It started this morning when I woke up to the smoke chamber filled with pellets accumulated during the seasoning period. I spoke with Chris at LSG and he recommended checking the wiring to ensure the proper connections were made during production. I checked and all wiring appears to be correct. The unit runs for about an hour and then dumps pellets into the smoke chamber. This has happened on all three occasions I attempted to start the seasoning process. Waiting to hear back from Chris at this time.

[Jerod Broussard]

Dang. Is it just shoving a huge mound that comes out of the firepot?

[Huskee]

What a frustrating thing. I'm sure they'll make it right.

[ofelles]

Bummer!

[Saltman]

It will work normally for about an hour and a half, and then the shenanigans start.

[Saltman]

Extremely frustrating...of course, my wife is concerned it won't be functional for my daughters' graduation party next Sunday.

[glitchy]

What temp are you running at? From your very brief description it sounds like a flameout. Are you trying to run at a super low temp like 150-180°? if so, turn it up to 250° and try. If already up in the 225° plus range make sure the fan is running and check that there’s not something blocking airflow between the fan and the firepot or in the exhaust stack.

Pretty amazed you said it shipped yesterday and are burning in today.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

As glitchy is well aware, it's super sucky when a very expensive highly bragged about product doesn't work out of the box. However have patience, give LSG a chance to help ya out. I would suggest taking videos of things to make the support process clear (both via LSG and on here or elsewhere). I've seen multiple times where a pellet grill owner was having issues and then the problem is easily spotted in a pic or video turning out to be something other than the user was describing. Don't get too frustrated and give things a chance to be worked out. I'm sure you'll get it worked out, and if it's by this weekend even better.

[Saltman]

Pics from the earlier description.

[Jerod Broussard]

Holy crap. Firmware must be going rogue.

[Dan Deter]

That's insane!

[Saltman]

Also, I was trying to get to the 225temp. Made it to 200 and things went South. Four times in totality....Chris said everything appeared correct according to the logs. It would function properly until the hour mark.

[Saltman]

I pulled everything out this morning and tried again. I found the culprit......the igniter stop working after initial startup.

[glitchy]

The ignitor should only run for the initial start up, once the fire is burning they shut off. Feeding pellets and moving air keeps the fire burning. Some pellet grills have a relight feature if it detects a flameout, but unless a lot have added it in past couple years it’s not that many different grills.

[glitchy]

I’m guessing most pellet grills can probably push a max of 2-4 lbs pellets an hour through the auger and that sure looks like more than that sitting in your cook chamber. Is your exhaust stack wide open and do you see smoke coming out of it that whole first hour and a half?

If you drain the hopper, clean up all those pellets then throw just a handful in the burn pot, you could leave the deflectors/drip trays out and watch those ignite and burn with the lid open and maybe see/hear the fan stoking it. It seems the fire is not burning for quite a long time for that many pellets to pile up. I don’t think we have to question if the auger is working, but that might help you confirm the ignitor and fan.

Flameouts can be a few things. Feed rate too low (probably not the case here), pellet bridging/blockage (again), and airflow are the usual issues I’ve seen. Maybe they put a turbo auger motor in (i.e. wrong motor somehow) and it’s feeding at a rate that can snuff out the fire, but that would be something I’ve never seen as max temps on a pellet grill are usually dictated by the auger running non-stop and most auger motors are 1-3 RPM.

[Saltman]

It started back up and is now burning. The auger is currently running at 60%, should I manually set it?

[glitchy]

Unless you start exceeding your set temp considerably and see the auger not pausing I wouldn’t play with auger settings. From the data so far it seems it’s doing its job, but never getting to temp before fire goes out.

[Saltman]

Could Lid Detection contribute to my troubles?

[glitchy]

If you’re opening it repeatedly to check things it could maybe? That would be specific to LSG and Yoder pellet grills with the Fireboard controls. I would hope they implemented it differently for the pellet grills than standard Fireboards where it’s mostly used to run fans on charcoal fires and needs to work differently than you would want on a pellet grill (or at least I would think that). Can you turn lid detection off?

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

It could... On the MAK the auger won't spin if the hopper lid is open. If the switch intermittently sent a false signal I suppose it could lead to a flameout from starvation and then a pile of pellets... not sure how the LSG switch functions though. Also on the MAK if the temp drops too much a flameout alarm sounds and then tries to reignite 1x. Again not sure how the LSG handles this

[Saltman]

This time the pellets continually fed, and the temp jumped up to 580 degrees, so I turned it off.

[Jerod Broussard]

Has Chris ever heard of this issue before? If lid detection caused this no one could ever check their freaking meat.

[Saltman]

He has asked me to turn it off. Also, switch port from 7 to port one to determine if the wall probe is bad.

[Saltman]

Fan #1 and igniter wires crossed. Ops checking at this time.

[Skip]

Good news! Fingers crossed.

[Jerod Broussard]

Pulling for ya!!

[Donw]

Fingers crossed that this fixes everything. What a pain to have this happen on first use but glad to see LSG stepping up to help you get it straight so quickly. I’m sure someone in the factory is going to get a talking to.