Set up and seasoning

[pondee]

Like a kid in a toy store, my 4 rack digital arrived to late to do much but read the manual.  Probaly a good thing.  Home from work the next day, after reading the manual completely, only the engilsh portions, set u a table along side my garage, place the unit thereon and start packing and inventory.  Everything is there, give it all a good wach and start assembly.  Fairly straight forward.  Lining the SM attachment holes was a bit of a challenge as they are hard to see.  Assembled (correctly?), insert pucks into tube, plug in the unit and start pushing buttons.  The tower warms up, the puck plate warms up and I press the wood button to start moving pucks.  Is this necessary, or does the digital move the pucks along once the plates has warmed up?  Tower, set for 150 goes to 167 (not a problem) smoke is made like crazy.  Then the whole thing shuts down.  No heat to the tower, no heat to the puck plate, nothing.  I fool with the SM hear a beep and things start working again only to soon shut down again.  Run to my phone to call customer service, but no during normal business hours.  Go to the web site and find that an "E" message means that I need to open the smoke generator.  I don't know how to do this.     Go to the forums and find that someone adjusted his feeder tube.  So, I loosen the feeder tube.  The instructions say to push the feeder tube "firmly".  Seems, however, not too firmly.  Loosen the tube, reset the SG and oven to season, again, things seem to be working.  Oven heat, dduring the hour seasoning session, fell to the 150 set temp, 3 pucks advanced and made smoke, everything shut down on schedule.  My questions:

A.  Is the SG finicky that I should be expecting "E" messages and have the unit shut down during a smoke?
B.  Was it that the tube was inserted too firmly that caused the "E" message shutting down the process? (seems to be as things worked well after loosening)
C.  Do the pucks advance automatically on the digital units once the plate has warmed up, or do they need to be manually advanced?
D.  The unit really isn't "set it and forget it" is it?  Needs to be monitored.  Still easier than maintaining  a fire at a constant temp.

Any other kind advice is always appreciated.  Am I missing anything?

Thanks:

Frank

[Saber 4]

Welcome to the forum and the Bradley, once you get things tweaked to your liking you will spend less time hovering around it. I haven't had any issues with puck advancing or error messages so I will defer to others on those issues, you will need to press the puck advance twice to get a puck onto the burner when it warms up. Mine advances one puck as soon as I turn on the SG and then every 20 minutes thereafter. If I am going to let it warm up more than 20 minutes I wait to put the pucks in until I load the meat then press the puck advance until I get a puck on the burner.

As others will tell you keep the vent open always never close more than 1/4 so you don't get moisture build up and black rain and I use boiling water in the puck bowl for the smoke period and replace it with a disposable 9x13 cake pan with boiling water, this has helped me keep the temp drops to a minimum.

Remember to cook to IT (internal temp) instead of just time, have fun, ask questions and post pictures (we love pics)

[KyNola]

Check the sensor cord(the small cord that runs between the smoke generator and the tower) and make sure it is firmly plugged in at both ends.  Plug and unplug the sensor cord several times to make sure it is making good contact.  That can be a source of an E message.  I have never found that the feeder tube will cause an E message.  As for opening the smoke generator, unplug the power source, remove the smoke generator and turn it upside down.  There are 8 screws around the perimeter of the bottom of the smoke generator.  Remove those 8 screws.  There are screws in the center.  DON'T remove those.  Now, open the smoke generator clamshell style.  Check all of the connections inside.  Even if they appear to be connected push them together anyhow.  Put it all back together and see if that will solve your E message problem.

[rveal23]

Welcome to the Forum Pondee and sorry to hear that you are having issues with your Smoker. Once these issues are cleared up you will completely enjoy your new toy.
Ask as many questions as you have and you will have a stream load of information given to you.  As Saber has indicated, Post Pictures we love to see the great Food!

[tskeeter]

Pondee, in response to your puck feeding question, the smoke generator feeds a puck every 20 minutes.  It does not automatically feed enough pucks to get a puck onto the puck burner once the puck burner has warmed up.  But you can do a reasonable simulation of such as process.

Your Bradley has three puck positions between the puck feed tube and the puck burner.  (The puck burner is the third position.)  When you turn on your smoker generator, it will feed a puck into the first position.  If you then press the manual puck feed button, a second puck will feed and the initial puck will be pushed into the second position.  Wait 20 minutes and the puck feeder will automatically feed another puck and the initial puck will be pushed into the number three position, on the puck burner plate.  By this time, the puck burner plate will have had 20 minutes to heat up and, with the puck now pushed onto the puck burner, you'll start to make smoke.     

   

[Habanero Smoker]

Hi Pondee;

Welcome to the forum.

The link below is also helpful in trouble shooting:
Bradley FAQ's

[beefmann]

welcome to the forum, lots of good  people and information here

[ragweed]

Welcome to the forum from Nebraska.

[pondee]

Thanks everyone.  Turns out that a little jiggling and re-assembly after reading the links and suggestions, things worked out alright.  did the seasoning again, one hour 20 minutes and everything worked on time.  More of a trial run than seasoning.  Saturday, a pork loin and Sunday a chuck roast.  Talk to you on Monday.  Enjoy the weekend.  Golf Friday afternoon, grilled burgers Friday night, smoked pork loin Saturday and chuck on Sunday.  ciao 

[Saber 4]

Sounds like a good weekend plan, just remember that like unicorns without pictures it never happened ;)