heater upgrade not working properly

[love the smoke]

I need a little help with my OBS that has a 900 watt heater upgrade, and the PID upgrade , since I put it in it has worked wonderfully, until now.
       Before, the heater would get red hot and heat up rather quickly, now it don't get red anymore and it cant keep up after I load the smoker. What can i check out?
     Seems like it is not getting full voltage to the heater, heater just is warming up and not getting FULLY hot. What happens when a SSR goes bad can it go bad a little or is it work or no work?
        I think I still have the slider switch wired in can I just tie the two wires togather to bypass this?

As you can see I know little about all this electrical stuff, and I am looking to the experts for some guidence (HELP)


LTS 

[car54]

A PID is like an on off switch, so either the heating element Is full hot or it is off. As you said it sounds like you are not getting full power which would lead me to think that something is wrong with the slider. Is the slider turned up all the way? I also do not know if the slider can handle 900 watts.

Brad

[love the smoke]

Slider is all the way up then backed off just a smidge due to the fact that some have reported that there seems to be a dead spot on the highest setting, The slider has been working for a long time with the heater upgrade. Maybe it did give up the ghost, can I bypass it?

LTS

[car54]

Since you are using a PID there is no reason to use the slider. It can be bypassed.

Brad

[love the smoke]

just tie wires to gather


LTS

[Habanero Smoker]

If you hooked your 900 watt heater to the temperature control, that may be causing a problem. I'm in the process of adding a second element to my which will make mine 1000 watts, and the consensus from serveral members was that the OBS temperature control would not likely carry that load.

[love the smoke]

Well took the load of ribs out and put in the house oven to finish off, the OBS was only getting up to 130 degrees.

Now that the OBS completely cooled off I took the volt meter to it and I have 110 volts across the two connections on the heater, and the voltage does change with he slider control, so I do still have the slider control wired in. But back to the original problem , with 110 volts going to the heater and the heater not getting very hot, is the heater shot?

LTS 

[Mr Walleye]

Well took the load of ribs out and put in the house oven to finish off, the OBS was only getting up to 130 degrees.

Now that the OBS completely cooled off I took the volt meter to it and I have 110 volts across the two connections on the heater, and the voltage does change with he slider control, so I do still have the slider control wired in. But back to the original problem , with 110 volts going to the heater and the heater not getting very hot, is the heater shot?

LTS 

LTS

I'm assuming you did the 900 watt finned strip heater mod that Beefman did.

Did you install a fan, similar to his?

The reason I ask is because most finned strip heaters are designed to have air flow. This means if they don't they may burn out prematurely. When I built my big smoker I used 2 - 1100 watt finned strip heaters but I also used a high temp blower for this specific reason.

Mike

[drano]

love the smoke,
When I got my Auber plun-n-play PID this winter, I bypassed the slider control.  Since I didn't want to cut any wires, I went to Radio Shack, got some connectors like the once on the wires/slider, and crimped them to a short piece of wire.  Then I plugged that jumper wire to the 2 wires going to/from the slider.  It has worked great on about 10 smokes.  If I ever want to put it back to original, all I have to do is remove the jumper wire and plug the factory connectors back into the slider.

get smokin
drano

[starship]

First, I am an Industrial Electrician.

You are using a PID for temp control; you no longer need the slider. Your power plug should feed the heater element only. That's the way mine is wired, and working great now to 10-12 smokes.  I can recover from 160 back to 225 in 20 minutes!

The advice on the fan is also correct.

[starship]

I contacted the company (Vulcan Electric) that make the heater (900w). Their advice is to have forced air past the heater to prevent premature burnout.

[beefmann]

i agree with starship and drano....

[love the smoke]

Thanks everyone, seems I have a little more work to do after I order my new heater, thanks

LTS