Heated up on smoke to 400 plus and big fire

BudnAnn

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Feb 2, 2020
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Location
Everett, wa
Grill
Traeger Scout 20" Black Tabletop Pellet Grill and Smoker
Wanted to smoke some pork hocks. Unit all clean, new pellets. Fired off and once it got up to temp, closed cover. Temp went up to 330 degrees then fire shut down and it cooled to 60 some degrees. Restarted, and it built up to 400 degrees plug. Opened lid, flames shot out sides of grill and on my arm. Huge fire in fire pit. Shut off unit and closed the lid. Scared to use it any more. Never had this before.
 
The process for re-starting if your fire goes out is in the owners manual. If you don't follow it, you can end up in a very dangerous situation. Basically, when the fire goes out, it keeps feeding pellets...even more so because it's trying to get the temp back up, which it can't do because the fire is out.. So you when you restart it, there's crap ton of extra pellets in there that will cause a huge fireball when you open the lid, and in some cases has even blown the lid off.
 
Been having lots of issues with my Traeger lately. Have had it around 10 years so I've been through many different challenges with with the grill. I've probably replaced my controller 2-3 times over the years and replaced 1 hot rod. In December I was having issues with the fuse blowing. I ordered a new controller and auger motor. Installed both of them, turned the grill on and everything seemed to be working normal again. I didn't have anything to cook at the time, so I shut it down. Fast forward to this weekend and I was planning on cooking some pork belly. I cleaned out the fire box and turned the grill, set to smoke. Seemed to get started ok, so I went inside to prepare the meat. Came out after 5 min or so and it seemed to be heating up fine, smoking, etc., so I shut the lid and turned it up to 225. Go back inside to wait for it to regulate. About 20 min later I come out and it's over 500. WTH? I take the grates and everything out to see what's happening and the fire is huge and the auger is still turning. I shut it down, put out the fire, clean it out and start over. Same result. The auger is not slowing down or going into pause mode when it gets over the requested temp. This is a brand new Traeger controller. I have ordered a new controller again, thinking maybe I just got a faulty controller. I also have contacted Traeger but they are no help. They just send the standard set of starting instructions. Anyone see this before? Am I on the right track with thinking it was just a bad controller?
 
The process for re-starting if your fire goes out is in the owners manual. If you don't follow it, you can end up in a very dangerous situation. Basically, when the fire goes out, it keeps feeding pellets...even more so because it's trying to get the temp back up, which it can't do because the fire is out.. So you when you restart it, there's crap ton of extra pellets in there that will cause a huge fireball when you open the lid, and in some cases has even blown the lid off.
 
Thank You. That makes sense. Now, why, when I am in the smoke position which I understand that runs around 180 to 200 or so degrees, go up to 350 to 400 then shut down and drop back to 60 I can not even get it to cook at 350. It goes up then shuts off.
 
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