Yoder Smokers Community Forum

My new Yoder YS640 arrived a few weeks ago, and I have been playing with it and getting to know it a little better. Coming from a Traeger, this is a wee bit more complicated. (My son was drooling over the Traeger, so I let him "steal" it, and I replaced it with the Yoder...)

For those of you reading the forum on this Thanksgiving day, here is some background material for the issue I had yesterday and this morning.

Yesterday I plugged in the Yoder, turned it on, hit Start, and immediately adjusted the set temperature to 350 degrees. Coming back in a few minutes, the smoker was not heating up, and did not ignite. (I had vacuumed out the grate.) I ended up unplugging it, repeating the process, and everything worked fine, and it ignited just fine.

This morning I vacuumed it out again, plugged it in, hit Start, and several different things happened. Initially the fans came on, but the front panel did not light up, and did not respond to button pushing. Hit Start, and no change (no auger / pellet movement). Turned it off, unplugged, tried to repeat, but when I turned it on this time, the fans did not even come on, front panel was still not responding. Strange. Initial sense of panic flooded over me, but unplugged again, drank a cup of coffee, and started the process a 3rd time. Turned it on, and YES! Fans came on fine, front panel came alive, and all is good. I thought.....

I left it alone for a few minutes, rechecked, and it was not heating up, and did not ignite. As I was hitting a time barrier for what I am smoking today, I ignited it with my trusty propane lighter. Then the Yoder took over, the fans are working, the controller is working, came up to temperature just fine, and is currently smoking away...

I just read Herb's ignitor posting, and while I will recheck the alignment issue for the ignitor, the fact that I had to plug and unplug a few times to get it working this morning is confusing, and making me think there is a controller "feature" I am currently not aware of...

By the way, I had some initial questions on the operation of the Yoder, and Herb called me up on a Friday night, and took considerable time to talk me through my newbie issues. This was totally unexpected, and highly appreciated. I told him I would put him on my speed dial, but just couldn't call him on Thanksgiving...

So, for today, while I don't have an emergency relating to the Thanksgiving feast, I am trying to figure out what I possibly done to cause the controller to do what it did. Hopefully this is an easy explanation and has occurred to others before.

My Traeger experience was excellent, I could turn it on, and had no issues. I didn't expect a learning curve on using the Yoder, but apparently this takes a wee bit more finesse and a smarter user.

Would appreciate your thoughts. Thx.

Thought I would post a follow-up. Still not sure what happened yesterday. Today I cleaned it up, and left the heat shield out, to watch the process for the ignition.

Today, everything worked as it was supposed to. Turned on, control screen came up, fans on, pellets moving, and ignition.

The only difference I can tell is that this time I had the heat shield off to watch the pellets. Going to try again tomorrow. Maybe this is just newbie type issues, but it had me stumped yesterday.

On the positive side, I did get the two turkeys smoked to perfection, along with two pans of baked beans. Was wondering initially if the 640 was too big for my normal use, but the size was perfect yesterday.

I too have had failed ignition on a couple of occasions in the past year. I just make sure it starts before I walk away to far. I don't know what makes one time different from the next.

I'm gonna try this. I had to manually start mine last week. But, 2 days before I had cleaned the smoker really well and had a bit of power wash going on. The igniter was still wet. When I used it again 2 days later, I manually started it but I noticed the igniter was at least partially glowing red. When my replacement comes in I'll check it and do the ohm test, maybe it's still good.

I'll let you know.

Follow up to my follow up....Today, the Yoder was plugged in, and started perfectly. The way it is supposed to....smoking beer brats this afternoon, just for fun. I waited till the smoker was at 350 before turning it down to 220ish.

Perhaps the Yoder felt my sense of panic when it didn't work correctly on Thanksgiving, knowing I had a number of critical time sensitive cooks to perform. Ever since that eventful morning, it has been working fine. I am following Herb's suggestions for best practices, even to using the same brand of pellets.

Mike, you said that you make sure it starts before you walk away. I assume you have it assembled already, or are you peeking at the igniter with the grills off?

Conumdrum, you said that your igniter is being replaced, but still partially glows red?

Related question: If one turns the smoker on, pushes Start, and immediately turns the temperature to 220, would that affect the igniter? On Thanksgiving, I did not wait 10 minutes.

Unless something comes up again in the next few weeks, I will have to admit to some unknown newbie mistake, just not sure what I did or didn't do to keep the smoker happy. I did check that both fans are running, unplugging after use, cleanup after use, using good pellets, etc.

It still glows red, not sure if enough red. I'll check it after my parts come in. No reason you can't turn it down to 220 right away. I do, never an issue. I usually go a bit higher than my set temp to start, tossing 4 pork butts in there drops the temp a lot and it takes a while to recover.

When I say "walk away" its that I make sure there is ignition or smoke/heat coming from the chimney before I leave it alone for any period of time. On those rare times that it has failed only once did I end up with a pile of pellets in the bottom.

Saguaromike wrote:When I say "walk away" its that I make sure there is ignition or smoke/heat coming from the chimney before I leave it alone for any period of time. On those rare times that it has failed only once did I end up with a pile of pellets in the bottom.

I do the same basic thing.

I don't clean mine every time I use it--found it's not necessary. I typically clean it after 2 or 3 uses. I ALWAYS allow it to do it's burn down after each use before I unplug it, so I give it the best possible chance to eliminate unburned pellet buildup between uses. I have never had a big build up of pellets between uses, based on what's left in the hopper when I clean it. My start up procedure is similar to Herb's suggestion except that I don't usually leave it set at 350 for 30 minutes unless I'm going to be cooking at that temp. I typically turn it down to close to my cook temp right after the H1 disappears from the display. I stay at the smoker with lid open until I smell and see visible smoke coming out at the chimney end, then close lid, cover with welding blanket and then leave. Never had a problem at all. I do know that, if I don't see and smell smoke after just 2-3 minutes, then there's a problem and I shut it off, unplug and remove grates to see what's going on under the heat diffuser and inside the hopper. Never had pellets spilling into body of smoker by using this procedure. I have had a hopper full, but I was always able to clean it out before it lit, as it has only happened when I had an igniter problem, or there was an ash plug built up around the igniter that prevented the pellets from igniting.

Got my box this week, new style grate (old one never gave me a problem and I do lotsa steaks), Got a Yoder temp probe for 'just in case' and the new igniter. Will test this weekend.

Tested my 640 again, the igniter worked perfectly fine. So now I have a spare. Dunno why it didn't fire up that one time, mebbe cuse it was damp from the annual wash. I did get the new style burn grate, fit in perfect. Now I have a spare burn grate too since the old one was fine.

My problem has not reoccurred either, so I am going to chalk it up to a newbie mistake of some sort. I now have the "unplug check" and "check for ignition" firmly in my start up and shut down routine.

FYI. Thought I would post an update to my previous problem. Since November, have used the YS640 quite a few times. Ignition after hitting START has been somewhat inconsistent, enough so that I hover around the smoker until I am confident it ignites. In the meantime, I have been reading a number of the Yoder documents, including one on how to replace the igniter.

Interestingly, today I smoked some Italian sausages. Before doing so, checked the igniter, and realized that it was not sticking out from its "sheath" (not sure what else to call it). One of the documents indicated the igniter should be sticking out about 1/8" an inch. Not very far, but further than what mine was. So.....I did a minor adjustment, exposing a little more of the igniter. Smoker started just fine.

Time will tell if this addresses my newbie issues, but since then I have started the smoker twice, and it started right up.

In my 1500 when it arrived my igniter and tube tube were initially in contact with the burn plate. With Herbs help I was able to position the tube so that it didn't contact the burn plate and extended the igniter out a bit (very little bit) from the tube. I don't have any startup issues and I do vac out my firebox before each cook.

Here are some photos from my igniter as reference:

Also I might note that I do hang around my smoker to ensure it lights. Mine takes 2-3 minutes before I see smoke begin to come out of the stack then I start my 30min timer for warm up.