No heat and puck feeder flaky...

[radamo]

Let me start off by saying my original black Bradley smoker is just over a year old...

I prepared 3 racks of ribs for an event with my neighbors yesterday. Fire up the smoker at 9 planning to put the ribs in at 10. At 9:30 I go out to check it out and my temp is only 100. I pulled out all connections and reseated. Also tried backing off the temp slider from full right since I saw a few references to a dead spot.  After a full hour my temp was 130.

So given that I already had people coming I went to plan B. I figured I would smoke the ribs cold for three hours and then slow cook with indirect heat on my weber.  Put the ribs in and go to advance the pucks and I see that every third or fourth push on the advance button actually does any thing. So not only did I have to manually check each 20 minutes to advance the puck. But then I had to move them over to the grill and slow cook manually.  I thought this was why I bought a smoker, so I could avoid all this. Ribs came out fine but I am a very unhappy camper right now.

I will call Bradley customer service tomorrow and see what they say about these issues.

[TedEbear]

It sounds like you may have a couple of problems with the smoker.  The low heat is probably a bad element.  You can check this by plugging in the cooking tower directly into an outlet, bypassing the SG and see if the element glows red when the slider is all the way to the right. 

If you have a multimeter you can check the resistance through the element.  Take the wire off one end before you take a measurement.  A working element should be around 27-32 ohms.

On the puck not advancing, you might look inside the SG and check for any loose connections.

[radamo]

Received my replacement element and a new motor from Bradley.  I had to buy these since my 1 year warranty ran out a few months ago.  There were no instructions for installing the element.  Are they posted anywhere?  I could not locate any.
Thanks,
RA

[mikecorn.1]

Pretty much replace the old one with the new one. Not hard at all. Just be careful with the ceramic pieces that hold the element in place when tightening them back down.


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[radamo]

Okay.  Thanks for the quick reply Mike.  Hope to get smokin' this weekend.
RA