Up to Temp and then Failure

[mikemontauk]

Good Morning:
Put a brisket in my Digital 4 rack last night at 10pm. She came right up to Temp, and was smoking away. Cold Night, but I had her out of the wind (30F). Brisket was at room temp when it went in. At 5am the temp in the unit was 50F. Meat was warm (IT 100F) and a great bark had formed. I foiled her and she is in the oven.
This also happened at Thanksgiving with the Turkey. Oven is chugging along for a few hours, and then just loses the heat. I checked all of the connections they were good.  Is it the element?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Happy New Year,
Mike

[Alanfromwis]

  Mike,
  Did you advance the cook time past the default of 4:00 on the cook timer? If not it would of timed out.
Alan

[mikemontauk]

Thank you for response. Yes. Oven was still on when I came out this AM.

[Alanfromwis]

  Next try plugging the power cord that goes from outlet to controller directly into jack on the back of oven. That will bypass the controller & the element should glow red if ok. Do not leave it bypassed for smoking but only to test if the problem is there.

[manfromplaid]

what else is running on the elec circuit. it could be that the power is low if its cold out. maybe the furnace or fans kicking in.  the element needs a steady power flow

[dave01]

you set the cook time and the smoke time differently, are you sure you did it right? was your vent all the way open?

[mikemontauk]

Well Versed on Heat and Smoke time sets. Cleaned sensor, and reconnected. No change.Plugged in today, and I'm getting no glow. Looks like I'm going to change element. Thank you.

[TedEbear]

Looks like I'm going to change element.

You can verify if the element is bad with a multimeter.  Disconnect one or more of the wires and then check the resistance through the element.  A working element should read around 27-32 ohms resistance.

[dave01]

Usually the element is either good or bad, if this happened before I would think it would be something else