LG0800BL / ghost temps

[chamberscreek]

I simply cannot trust my Black Label smoker to do anything unmonitored. Cranked mine up at 225F early this evening to smoke a pork butt. After putting the butt on, I checked on it about 45 minutes later. The actual temp still read 225F on the display, but when I opened the smoker up, there was no heat, no smoke. Banged the side of the feeder bin, thinking pellets were stuck in the auger. I could hear pellets starting to drop, and could see it was starting to function again. The actual temp displayed then dropped down around 115F (accurate, I assume). Came back again about 15 minutes later to check on the smoker, and it was on fire. No idea why -- no grease had been generated yet, and the insides were totally clean when I started.

Has anyone else seen the smoker display clearly bogus temps? This is my 2nd controller for this smoker, but sure seems like there's a Ghost in the Machine...

 

[Darrell B]

I simply cannot trust my Black Label smoker to do anything unmonitored. Cranked mine up at 225F early this evening to smoke a pork butt. After putting the butt on, I checked on it about 45 minutes later. The actual temp still read 225F on the display, but when I opened the smoker up, there was no heat, no smoke. Banged the side of the feeder bin, thinking pellets were stuck in the auger. I could hear pellets starting to drop, and could see it was starting to function again. The actual temp displayed then dropped down around 115F (accurate, I assume). Came back again about 15 minutes later to check on the smoker, and it was on fire. No idea why -- no grease had been generated yet, and the insides were totally clean when I started.

Has anyone else seen the smoker display clearly bogus temps? This is my 2nd controller for this smoker, but sure seems like there's a Ghost in the Machine...

May be an igniter issue

 

[chamberscreek]

May be an igniter issue

Agreed on the fire part -- gonna keep watching that thing. Not a ton of mileage on this one, but...

The false temp reporting is a little more concerning -- just had too many issues with the technology.

 

[chamberscreek]

Once again -- this smoker seems utterly unreliable. Started it up with a 225F temp (for the usual low and slow), looked over at at about 30 minutes later, and noticed what seemed like excessive smoke. Checked, and it was over 400F. Manually dropped the temp a bit and back up, and it slowly recovered. Did a steady behavior for a while when I was around, but then had to step away for about an hour or so (friends with kids were around, needed wrangling help), came back and the smoker was just off. No power surges / outages (I have that monitored for my computer equipment), no errors, nothing else interesting -- just turned itself off. The ONE thing this smoker is supposed to do -- hold a temp steady for many hours -- it is incapable of doing. So frustrating. Am I the only one that has seen this? Just cannot trust this for an overnight cook...