I keep getting deep yellow smoke rolling out of the pellet hopper bin, I have taken the unit apart and discovered it was a failed gasket (at least I think?) Like, it almost starts a fire in the pellet hopper bin and I have to hose all the pellets off and they of course fluff out and I have a huge mess to clean up. I tried a high heat roll of gasket from Amazon and it worked for about 2 weeks but already doing it again. Anybody else having this issue? My Lexington 540 is probably 3-4 years old. The gasket location is hard to explain, but if you have worked on these I think you’ll know. It’s the flat spot when you put the hopper box back over the auger/fan etc then screw all of the screws back in
Smoke in pellet hopper/gasket failure
- Thread starter MarkWins
- Start date
Welcome from Texas to the group!
Give pitboss support a call
If they can’t help you then I’d get some more gasket material and put some high heat gasket maker on each side of the gasket and tighten it up
Hopefully this helps you
Give pitboss support a call
If they can’t help you then I’d get some more gasket material and put some high heat gasket maker on each side of the gasket and tighten it up
Hopefully this helps you
Sparky
Well-known member
Welcome to the club
Freedbyjc
Well-known member
Sounds like several possibilities… the smoker is not level or your fire pot is full of ash and the pellets are not dropping in like they should but are being held at the auger edge due to excessive ash buildup or an unlevel surface underneath the smoker. It causes the pellets in the auger tube to burn back because they can’t push forward anymore. Always the smoker should be at least level if not canted so the firepot is below the auger.
Even if clean beforehand, pellet choice, ambient temperatures and humidity and dial set temperature could fill it up with ash faster.
Additionally, a full hopper provides sufficient back pressure to keep most of the smoke flowing towards the barrel. Keeping your hopper full and its lid closed and that will prevent the smoke blowback.
Also…. If your hopper is smoking after shutdown, you’ll want to ramp down your dial temperature to 200° for a few minutes before turning it off. If this wasn’t in your manual then it should be.
At higher temperatures you need to ramp down your dial temperature before shutting down. It allows the fire to cool and burn off all the pellets in the firepot and not catch those in the auger.
What to do to fix this?
Whenever it happens, use the prime button to push the burning pellets out of the auger.
If you don’t have a prime button, open the lid so the barrel temperature will drop and that’ll activate the auger to push the burning pellets out of the auger.
Thanks! This makes a lot of sense. I know it's not due to the ash pit being full but when I have the temp up around 400 or so I don't reduce temp to 200 for a bit, I just crank the dial all the way off and that is when this happens a lot. Great info, I'll ramp down my dial temp before shutdown and see if that helps.
jrmpilot
New member
For what it is worth. I have a three year old lexington. Just recently it began to smoke through the hopper after about two hours at the smoke setting "S". Tried all the fixes mentioned on here (clean burn pot each time, pulled the auger and cleaned the tube and auger, replaced the auger motor with one from smoke daddy, pit boss pellets) etc) finally decided to replaced the burn pot with a stainless one (why not, tried everything else). Three cooks later there is no sign of smoke out of the hopper.
I will say with the original pit boss burn pot, the ignitor keep loosening and would slip back into the holding tube. No matter how hard I tried to tighten it (did not want to break the ignitor). The new burn pot has a better screw arrangement so that might have been my problem. The burn pot I got for info is the Quiimetal burn pot on amazon.
I will say with the original pit boss burn pot, the ignitor keep loosening and would slip back into the holding tube. No matter how hard I tried to tighten it (did not want to break the ignitor). The new burn pot has a better screw arrangement so that might have been my problem. The burn pot I got for info is the Quiimetal burn pot on amazon.
Great info! Thank you sooo much, I'm still struggling with the issue. It's worse when I have the smoke gate closed and I'm at 350F or above. Obviously the worst when I'm 400F or higher. I'm going to try this soon. Thanks for your input! LMK if you run into the same issue after a few more cooks.
