Smoke in pellet box, not in smoker

[bighamsport]

Have Pit Boss Pro Series 4 V2 PBV4PS2 vertical smoker. Has never given food any smokey flavor and when it smokes the smoke is in the pellet box and not in the smoker meat box. A friend gave it to me after four uses and after a half dozen tries I'm ready to dump it on someone else. Someone said adjust the "P" setting but this smoker doesn't have one. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bad smoker?​

 

[Steve In Pa]

Have Pit Boss Pro Series 4 V2 PBV4PS2 vertical smoker. Has never given food any smokey flavor and when it smokes the smoke is in the pellet box and not in the smoker meat box. A friend gave it to me after four uses and after a half dozen tries I'm ready to dump it on someone else. Someone said adjust the "P" setting but this smoker doesn't have one. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bad smoker?​

That’s a puzzler. I have the same model. Underneath the water tray is a cover. Take that off (4 screws) and you’ll see the burn pot. That should be clear and unobstructed when looking down through the hole. That hole is where the smoke comes up through to the smoking/cooking chamber.
I’ve not had any smoke backing up through the pellet hopper at all.

 

[bighamsport]

Thanks Steve. I'll give that a shot. I'm not far off from putting it out at the curb and putting a "free to good home" sign on it! Or maybe turning it into an electric pool water heater....

 

[Mike From R.I.]

I have the same model and love it. Is the fan for the fire pot running, should be all the time.

 

[bighamsport]

So after smoking a 16 pound brisket for about 8 hours (with smoke in pellet chamber only) my brisket still wasn't done. So I cranked the heat up to 400. Was watching it off and on climb to 400. Hit 400ish for a bit, then I noticed the temp was climbing and hit around 450. Backed the temp back down to 250. Well, somewhere along the line smoke started coming out of the meat chamber stack, so I checked and no more smoke was in pellet chamber. And the pellet chamber is also almost empty. So my guess is that somehow there were pellets blocking the smoke to the meat chamber and when I upped the heat they finally ignited and burned away, allowing smoke to flow properly. Still gonna take it apart and inspect it though.

 

[bighamsport]

So the next issue(?) I've discovered is the pellets are catching fire in the auger. I'm wondering if that would make temp spike? I also think that is why smoke goes into pellet box instead of smoker box. Or are the pellets supposed to burn in the auger?

 

[Steve In Pa]

So the next issue(?) I've discovered is the pellets are catching fire in the auger. I'm wondering if that would make temp spike? I also think that is why smoke goes into pellet box instead of smoker box. Or are the pellets supposed to burn in the auger?

They should not burn in the auger area. That would help explain smoke coming up that way.

Somehow then the flame is reaching them and igniting. That’s a puzzler.

I empty my fire pit after each use so the pellets have to drop several inches to the bottom.

 

[DanStealth]

I just did a 17 hour or so cook and I noticed when I went to pull it off there was smoke in the pellet box of my vertical. Temps were fine, so that wasn’t an issue but it concerns me that there was so much smoke there.

 

[Steelheader1974]

I get smoke in my vertical pellet box but it comes in from the side where it attaches on the side of the smoker with screws. So the smoke is actually exits the smoke chamber then going into the seam where it attaches I can see daylight thru it when I look from the pellet box in the back. It appears like metal got bent from factory or something of that nature. I really haven’t had any issues with it just something I noticed. I can see how pellets would get wet if it wasn’t under cover during a rain shower. I wouldn’t feel comfortable running that in the rain at all. The 1150 I run in the rain but that has a different style hopper