Little background with my stove.
Recently the coil on the auger motor melted. Thinking the windings had just broken down overtime i simply replaced the auger motor and the control board fuse which had blown.
Replaced motor and was well for about 3 hrs. Then my smoke alarm went off, along with the tell tale sign of burnt electronics and a bunch of smoke This time the coil was on fire, stove fuse had popped again as it should. At this point I know i have a bigger problems with the stove.
I am an Electronics tech by trade which means I know just enough to be dangerous so I began reverse engineering the control board since no schematic seems to exist for it. I quickly troubleshot the problem to a bad transistor in the upper auger control circuit. The transistor was leaking 30 volts when it should be at zero(when the auger shouldn't be turning) This type of motor on the auger motor will always try to draw 50 or so watts when it sees any voltage. So when it is receiving 120v. it draws approx. ..42 amps(normal), when it was seeing 30 volts it was drawing in excess of 1.6 amps on my Fluke! The windings had no chance.
So with nothing to loose, I swapped the bad transistor out with the transistor for the lower auger motor(which is an unused circuit in this stove) same transistor part #. I also installed a 1 AMP buss fuse in series with the yellow wire to the auger motor to prevent the samething from happening again. I highly recommend doing this! Not just for to prevent you auger motor from spontanous combustion, but it will save your auger motor if the tranisistor fails. Combustion of the coil smells awful, and is surely horrible for your health to inhale the fumes. On the brite side, I haven't come across a similer instance on the internet to what happened to me.
Anyways, put it all back to work and all seems well with one exception. The dead time between the auger turning seems to be to short. With Low fuel feed on 1, and the heat setting of 1 the stove operates like its on 5-7 heat setting. In fact with heat setting of 1, 5 fan setting after about 30 minutes the stove will automatically go to a 9 fan setting(still indicates 5 on the control board), it will after 10 or so minutes return to the 5 setting speed. Lower buttons are set 1-4-1, likely 1-6-1 would work even better.
The heat setting adjustments work, the duration of the auger motor turning is longer with a higher heat setting same dead time. The LFF setting seems to make a difference. LFF on 1, heat setting 1 the auger turns for approx 2 seconds, with approx. 5 seconds of dead time. The 5 seconds of dead time is my problem, it is far to short.
The problem has nothing to do with thermostat mode, ive tried both modes, just because, jumper is installed as the stove is not used in thermostat mode.
I know I likely I need a new control board, possibly the transistor failing did something to the IC in the timing circuit of the auger motor. I don't have the time to to source the parts and replace them. So I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything, or if there was a sensor that talked to the board and would adjust auger down time etc. Also the auger operation is the same during start up and operate, in fact it over fills the burn pot on start up. $300 for a new board is a tuff pill to swallow for what it is.
Recently the coil on the auger motor melted. Thinking the windings had just broken down overtime i simply replaced the auger motor and the control board fuse which had blown.
Replaced motor and was well for about 3 hrs. Then my smoke alarm went off, along with the tell tale sign of burnt electronics and a bunch of smoke This time the coil was on fire, stove fuse had popped again as it should. At this point I know i have a bigger problems with the stove.
I am an Electronics tech by trade which means I know just enough to be dangerous so I began reverse engineering the control board since no schematic seems to exist for it. I quickly troubleshot the problem to a bad transistor in the upper auger control circuit. The transistor was leaking 30 volts when it should be at zero(when the auger shouldn't be turning) This type of motor on the auger motor will always try to draw 50 or so watts when it sees any voltage. So when it is receiving 120v. it draws approx. ..42 amps(normal), when it was seeing 30 volts it was drawing in excess of 1.6 amps on my Fluke! The windings had no chance.
So with nothing to loose, I swapped the bad transistor out with the transistor for the lower auger motor(which is an unused circuit in this stove) same transistor part #. I also installed a 1 AMP buss fuse in series with the yellow wire to the auger motor to prevent the samething from happening again. I highly recommend doing this! Not just for to prevent you auger motor from spontanous combustion, but it will save your auger motor if the tranisistor fails. Combustion of the coil smells awful, and is surely horrible for your health to inhale the fumes. On the brite side, I haven't come across a similer instance on the internet to what happened to me.
Anyways, put it all back to work and all seems well with one exception. The dead time between the auger turning seems to be to short. With Low fuel feed on 1, and the heat setting of 1 the stove operates like its on 5-7 heat setting. In fact with heat setting of 1, 5 fan setting after about 30 minutes the stove will automatically go to a 9 fan setting(still indicates 5 on the control board), it will after 10 or so minutes return to the 5 setting speed. Lower buttons are set 1-4-1, likely 1-6-1 would work even better.
The heat setting adjustments work, the duration of the auger motor turning is longer with a higher heat setting same dead time. The LFF setting seems to make a difference. LFF on 1, heat setting 1 the auger turns for approx 2 seconds, with approx. 5 seconds of dead time. The 5 seconds of dead time is my problem, it is far to short.
The problem has nothing to do with thermostat mode, ive tried both modes, just because, jumper is installed as the stove is not used in thermostat mode.
I know I likely I need a new control board, possibly the transistor failing did something to the IC in the timing circuit of the auger motor. I don't have the time to to source the parts and replace them. So I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything, or if there was a sensor that talked to the board and would adjust auger down time etc. Also the auger operation is the same during start up and operate, in fact it over fills the burn pot on start up. $300 for a new board is a tuff pill to swallow for what it is.
