Trailblazer RT 340 temp problem

[Q-TIP2011]

Hello I bought my first pellet smoker last Friday.. and since I live a little under 2 hours away from tec tec and since I have read that they have great customer support I pulled the trigger on the 340.. I figured i travel a lot, and its just me and my wife. It’s big enough

well I bought my grill and did the initial burn. I walked away seemed to be running fine, then I tossed a rack of ribs on at 225.my wife like always has a honey do list, so naturally I say yes dear and do it.. I come back to see it jumping temps from. 280 to 200 ish...

I email rec tec. waited till the next day. they tell he to change the settings from aug 65 to aug 30. It still didn’t seem to help.. soo I call. I talked to a super sweet young lady named lex. She talked to me and we re set the aug to 35. This seemed to help for a while. Atleast for most of that cook....

Then tonight it did the same thing..
Tonight when I got home I moved the settings again. I moved from aug 35 to aug 30. I then set the temp to 225..
After about 8-10 mins the grill got to 255, then cooled down to 225. It held temp for about 6 mins then dropped to 196 That took about 5-8 mins. The grill then rapidly shot to 355. At this point it again dropped back to 225. It held for about 4 mins then dropped again to 200. Then rose back to 245.. you get the idea...

Is this a common problem with the 340?

I’m still in contact with rec tec hopefully we can get this worked out

 

[Bytor]

Q-Tip, what was the weather like when you were doing this? Windy days are known to mess with temps for just about any pellet smoker. Same thing for a really hot and or sunny day. I'm assuming you're using RT pellets?

I usually only see the spikes you mention at times after I open the lid. Other than that, it stays pretty close to my setpoint. Most typical smokes for me are in the LO to 275 range with an occasional blip or two. I would keep working with RT to get this resolved.

 

[Gonefishin]

I just got mine too so I only have the 1st cook with it under my belt but yesterdays whole chicken went pretty well. I set it to 275 which it held pretty much perfectly other then when I open the lid. It would drop down as low as 190's depending on how long I had it open, then over shoot coming back up. Took a few minutes to get back settled at 275 but once it did it did fine. This is what I would expect to see.

I did notice the 1 meat probe I used is off by a good amount, need to tweak it in. The grill temp was dead on when compared to my Thermopro.

 

[Q-TIP2011]

Q-Tip, what was the weather like when you were doing this? Windy days are known to mess with temps for just about any pellet smoker. Same thing for a really hot and or sunny day. I'm assuming you're using RT pellets?

I usually only see the spikes you mention at times after I open the lid. Other than that, it stays pretty close to my setpoint. Most typical smokes for me are in the LO to 275 range with an occasional blip or two. I would keep working with RT to get this resolved.

the temp has been nice out anywhere from 75 to 85 with little to no breeze.. and about the pellets...my buddy gave me 3bags of the cooking pellet brand.. I asked RT they said they were good...

im not mad I know they make great stuff... I’m a machinist, so I know no matter how good a a machine is... it’s still not perfect

hopefully they can help me today when I get off

 

[TXGunLover]

I have a 340 and it doesn't do this unless you're using crappy pellets. 3.5% is about right for the minimum auger speed in warm weather.

 

[Q-TIP2011]

I have a 340 and it doesn't do this unless you're using crappy pellets. 3.5% is about right for the minimum auger speed in warm weather.

I specifically asked them about the brand I was using and the said I was good... I’ll buy the brand they sell... I don’t care as long as it fixes the problem... to be fair everything I have cooked has been good.. the times are off a bit

 

[Bytor]

Hopefully, they can get it figured out for you. The one thing I noticed about using a pellet smoker is that it takes my cooks a little longer than I am used to. I also have a stick burner that will have temp swings and usually on the hotter side, so cooks took less time than on the 340. You just have to plan accordingly, or face the hungry masses!

 

[Q-TIP2011]

Hopefully, they can get it figured out for you. The one thing I noticed about using a pellet smoker is that it takes my cooks a little longer than I am used to. I also have a stick burner that will have temp swings and usually on the hotter side, so cooks took less time than on the 340. You just have to plan accordingly, or face the hungry masses!

Haha well lucky me! I’m the hungry mass most of the time

and after talking today they are shipping me a new controller... it has some kinda update... some tech talk.. Soo all I understood was “this should fix it” the support team has Been excellent.. I’ve worked with 3 different people, and they all treated me like a priority! That’s rare

 

[Mastertech59]

Haha well lucky me! I’m the hungry mass most of the time

and after talking today they are shipping me a new controller... it has some kinda update... some tech talk.. Soo all I understood was “this should fix it” the support team has Been excellent.. I’ve worked with 3 different people, and they all treated me like a priority! That’s rare

The RecTec bomb would be to make a controller that can be upgraded over a wifi download patch instead of having to replace hardware. ?

 

[Mrchez]

same with my 340--sending new controller-only had this for 1 week--any idea how hard this is to switch out

 

[TexasManInCajunLand]

same with my 340--sending new controller-only had this for 1 week--any idea how hard this is to switch out

Here is the "How To" vid from Rec Tec's YouTube channel:

 

[Mrchez]

Here is the "How To" vid from Rec Tec's YouTube channel:

Doesn’t seem like a easy fix

 

[TexasManInCajunLand]

Doesn’t seem like a easy fix

Yeah, it looks like it's a little bit of work, but at least with the video you have something to go off of to help eliminate the guesswork.

 

[Q-TIP2011]

So after the install it’s still swinging al over the place...now I’m starting to get really disappointed ?

 

[RecTecTom]

Mine had swings going on and they had me lower mine down to 1.5. Wasn’t quite stable there I bumped it up to 2.0 and haven’t had any issues since. Couldn’t lower it to that with the app had to do it through the front panel of the controller

 

[Q-TIP2011]

The only thing in the email he told me to do after the new controller was turns the the aug setting to 20...from 65... I’ll contact Rec tec again tomorrow

 

[Q-TIP2011]

After what seems like 1000 emails and 100 phone call, I finally just took the grill back to them. They kept it all day and seems like the fixed it. They had to replace my fan and a few other things. And it seems to be running fine.. hopefully the problem will stay away... hats off to Rec tec for the customer support..

 

[Q-TIP2011]

Ummm cooked some steaks was having a hard time holding temps again so when I was done I let the grill rest then finally hooked up my WiFi booster so I could actually record the data to show them directly, it got up to 250 then dropped rapidly to 142 then this

 

[Q-TIP2011]

 

[Gonefishin]

I can't view your movie, just the time bar.