Advice requested - dialing in Englander 25 PDV

[sam08861]

On the phone now... (edit) 53 minutes on hold so far!

 

[sam08861]

An agent picked up at about 1hr and here's the deal:

Call length was about 2 minutes: Great service and no nonsense response, in my opinion.

• 1 minute to get my mode/serial/purchase information and address
• 30 seconds for me to walk him through the cleaning, re-gasketing, hopper plate position, burn times and observations of the augers in the 2 modes. Told him I suspected motor or board.
• 15 seconds for him to tell me that the problem was the motors, and that a supplier had given them the wrong units and they found out too late, before a small number of units had shipped. Thanked me for being thorough and mentioned everything we did was exactly what he would have suggested to try.
• 15 seconds in closing chit chat and letting me know that the motors would ship today and probably be at my door in 2 days.

So.. Many thanks fellas for all the suggested troubleshooting!

Probably saved me endless hold time and major frustration in follow up! I would imagine it would have taken 3+ calls and with hold times of an hour each.

Will take some pictures of the new/old motors to see what the physical differences might be.

 

[Pellet rick]

nice glad its working out . Please keep us posted

 

[Ssyko]

Awesome . Man wait till you get the new motors, gonna burn like a blow torch

 

[sam08861]

Motors arrived and look a fair bit different than the ones in the unit. Will post some pics shortly.

Upon removing top auger motor, noticed that two grub screws had just dropped out. These appear to be from the locking collar.

Spinning, it turns freely, but I feel it's resting on some metal. Should this auger be free floating/silent?

To try and avoid removing the bearing and needing a gasket, I'll try to tighten down the grub screws on the collar and see if this gets it in the right position.

Open to advice!

edit... looks like I have a reuseable nylon gasket so will chance that it's not broken so I can check the bearing out better on a bench.

 

[Pellet rick]

You do not need to replace those gaskets every time. Yes the auger will rest on the tube , it doesn’t float freely but when you turn it by hand it should turn smoothly without binding. If it doesn’t you need to loosen the 4 screws and adjust

 

[sam08861]

Thanks Pellet Rick, decided to pull them both since have the nylon gaskets.

Lower auger bearing's zerk fitting cap was open and the universal joint portion of the bearing was a bit rough. Hit it with the last remnants from my grease gun. Turning much better now. Spin was fine on both augers. Aassuing the inner bearings can be oiled somehow in the future?

Going to read up on the alignment and reinstall with new motors shortly.

In the meantime, here's some pics..

Labels on original (wrong spec that came with the stove new)/replacement motors. Red is replacement on bottom in 1st pic.

Other angles

Top and bottom augers

Grubless collar

Wiring reference photo:

 

[Pellet rick]

What inner bearing you referring to? I just grease the zests twice a season . Don’t over think this stove. It’s a simple design. Put it back together making sure the augers spin freely and grease the zests . Put the correct motors on and run it .

 

[sam08861]

There's 2 types of bearings on the auger bearing assembly. 1 on the outside that acts as a gimbal bearing and another internal to this that spins. Zerk appears to grease the outer bearing, and I can't see the center to see if there are pass through holes into the inner bearing.

Not overthinking, but making observations and asking questions.

All going back together now. One question though, one of the replacement motors has the shaft in such an orientation that would I'd end up with a stuck socket. Any way to advance the motor just a 1/4 turn? Plug in, let it spin and unplug? run on a variac?

 

[sam08861]

Plugged in and ran the motors a bit to get the set screw in a reasonable place.

Reset stove, set to mode c and running 2,6 and 4,4,1 for the "inaugural" burn with the new motors.

Lower auger still at 40 second rotations, so hopefully not more of the same. Upper motor seems to turn much slower than I recall.

40 seconds , 1.5rpm is correct for Mode C?

Let's see what happens!

 

[sam08861]

bumped to 5,4,1 on the lowers, kept at 2,6 and looks promising.

 

[Pellet rick]

Didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers. Just want you to fix what is broken or wrong and run it for awhile. You ask 3 different people what there burn rate is and you will get 3 different answers

 

[sam08861]

Thanks Pellet Rick, no ruffled feathers here and it's all good. I know you were just encouraging me to forge ahead. You've and Ssyko have ben a ton of help already, so apologies if I came across as defensive.

Started this burn ant 6:30pm and so far looks like a clean burn pot and at ~350F at the door @ 10:15pm so definitely less pellet usage and heat.

My overnight wish is for a clean burn pot or at least a small birds nest only and 14 hours+ on the burn. Will be very happy with that

Fingers crossed on this one!

 

[sam08861]

Got about 15-16hrs on that last bag and the temp swung between a high of 375 and then seemed to settle a little over 300F.

Clean glass again and almost no ash (maybe 2 cups total, most of which was the 1" high birds nest that formed along the front) and no clinkers or burning embers.

Going to run on a higher setting and see how the temp goes as it's 26F and windy (18F windchill) so will try and set the burn performance at 550F or so.

A bit colder and snowing, so had to turn my attention to getting the snowblower running. Thank goodness for carb cleaner, seafoam and AC electric start.

Started on mode 4 and will see how high the temps get and bump up from there. Bottom settings are now 4,5,1 as I'd adjusted partway through the last batch. However, I understand this won't matter settings 3 to 9.