Thank you Mt Bob for all of your suggestions; I mean you no disrespect with that question. I'd also like to thank Rickwai for his comment.
A little background information at this point might help to enlighten everyone. I am a retired Industrial engineer (about 45 years) with a strong background in machine tool technology, metal & welding fabrication, hydraulics & pneumatics, and electrical knowledge. If I had the tools, metal, and time, I could build most of the components on that freekin stove but that's for another day (do you see my frustration building here).
Yesterday, I pulled my insert out for the 7th time, and in my case the hearth is very low so my stove sets about 3" off the floor, also keeping in mind that my stove weighs 450 pounds without pellets, and at my age, (80 is now in my rear view mirror
![Smile :) :)](/talk/styles/default/xenforo/smileys/grin.gif)
), it doesn't slide in and out as easily as it did when I installed it 15 years ago! Here is where everything stands right now. I now feel quite confident after a very close inspection yesterday of all of the involved components that I do not have the gummy stove problem. I now know that whenever I pull out the auger, it's always full of pellets which tells me that the pellets must be sliding down into the auger freely, and everything in and around my slide plate is clean. Yesterday, after sitting there and running the feed system while the stove was pulled out, (I made a jumper that connects directly to the auger motor) I just kept letting it feed pellets while I sucked them out of the burn pot with a small vacuum. After about 10-15 minutes it stopped feeding again.
Frustrated, I first tried to move the Pusher Arm Weldment, that "C" shaped cam piece that moves the slide plate back and forth and surprisingly, it was free and easy to move so I knew that the slide plate was not bound up. Then I tried to turn the auger and found that it didn't want to turn. As I wiggled the auger shaft back and forth, it finally started to move a bit and then moved backwards and finally it became free to rotate. I removed the auger motor and the auger shaft/bearing again, (for the eighth time now) and everything appeared normal, (and yes, the auger bearing turns nice and free like a brand new bearing). I then started to suspect that I had a "weak" motor that didn't have enough strength to shear any pellets that might be caught half way between the shutter opening above the auger tube and the auger, as the auger rotated because to my thinking, it's inevitable that some pellets in any of these stoves don't make it all the way through the shutter opening and will get sheared off as the auger rotates; those 4 RPM gear motors should do that quite easily.
I then put my old motor back in which was still running when I replaced it, but I wanted to rule out the motor because I wasn't aware at the time that these Gleason Avery motors (OEM to Harman), have thermal cut outs when overloaded. I felt that if the motor was jammed and stopping, it may have damaged it so I purchased a new Gleason Avery motor. They are really good motors; they are quiet and made in the USA, not like the other noisy imported pieces of junk. I then ran the same standing test just running the feed system while sucking out pellets and the stove ran for about 30 minutes without stopping. I put everything back together, pushed the stove back in, and started it up. That was about 5:00 yesterday afternoon. At first, it ran normal and then after a few minutes the fire started to die down but never went out, then it would pick back up and it did that for about 30-40 minutes. At this point I'm thinking control board, but after a while it started running normal with a nice steady fire, (we always run our stove on Stove Temp) and it stayed at a steady fire until we shut it off around 9:30 last night. This morning I turned it on around 4:30 a.m. and it ran normal and has been running fine as of this writing. Go figure! Did I (or do I) have a faulty new motor and/or a bad control board? Has the devil taken up residence in my stove?