- Joined
- Jun 10, 2019
- Messages
- 1,776
- Media
- 503
- Reaction score
- 1,588
- Location
- Corona Del Mar, California
- Grill
- Timberline 850
So, it's the day before Thanksgiving, my father-in-law (91) would like a brisket, I'm on it.
Sparked up my Timberline 850 gen 2, about 3 years old now. It fired up, and I let it stabilize for an hour, dropped in a 21lb Costco Prime packer (Brisket #13 for me).
The grill was steady at 190F, going with the overnight "Weekday Brisket" method, the grill temp dropped and dropped until it errored out with a flameout message.
I donned gloves, pulled the pan and firepot cover. The firepot was completely empty, hmmm.
I tried to re-ignite the grill, no pellets pumping into the pot, then I get a "Auger Motor Unplugged" error message? Hmmm
I emptied the hopper, wiggled the auger, it was free, Hmmm.
I pulled the bottom cover and checked out the auger motor, it was just hanging there by its wires, crap! The motor is soft mounted using rubber isolator standoffs and the rubber on all 4 had split in half, releasing the motor which had twisted under the auger load and yanked out its power cable from the front panel controller!!!
I did a quick McGuiver fix, glued the isolators back together and then encased them in 3/4" heat shrink tubing which got me back cooking for now.
I contacted Traeger via the app's integrated chat just now. They looked up the part and guess what? You can't buy these mounts, they come with a new Auger motor kit for $74.99
I put this out there because I suspect all D2 Traegers over 3 years old are probably going to see this failure. I was hoping we could just replace these as a normal maintenance item as this is going to be a common failure, I think.
Sparked up my Timberline 850 gen 2, about 3 years old now. It fired up, and I let it stabilize for an hour, dropped in a 21lb Costco Prime packer (Brisket #13 for me).
The grill was steady at 190F, going with the overnight "Weekday Brisket" method, the grill temp dropped and dropped until it errored out with a flameout message.
I donned gloves, pulled the pan and firepot cover. The firepot was completely empty, hmmm.
I tried to re-ignite the grill, no pellets pumping into the pot, then I get a "Auger Motor Unplugged" error message? Hmmm
I emptied the hopper, wiggled the auger, it was free, Hmmm.
I pulled the bottom cover and checked out the auger motor, it was just hanging there by its wires, crap! The motor is soft mounted using rubber isolator standoffs and the rubber on all 4 had split in half, releasing the motor which had twisted under the auger load and yanked out its power cable from the front panel controller!!!
I did a quick McGuiver fix, glued the isolators back together and then encased them in 3/4" heat shrink tubing which got me back cooking for now.
I contacted Traeger via the app's integrated chat just now. They looked up the part and guess what? You can't buy these mounts, they come with a new Auger motor kit for $74.99
I put this out there because I suspect all D2 Traegers over 3 years old are probably going to see this failure. I was hoping we could just replace these as a normal maintenance item as this is going to be a common failure, I think.
