Help-Firepot problem with Mt. Vernon AE

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Rickster

Member
Hearth Supporter
Jul 19, 2008
49
CT
Second year in operation, zero problems until now. I just happened to be watching while it did an autoclean today (thank God) and I noticed that the firepot bottom plate stopped about an eight inch before closing and stopped, leaving a gap. I cleaned the stove, firepot and bottom plate as well as I could, turned it on and it did the same thing. I checked the autoclean mechanism from underneath, nothing obvious, and I can manually return the plate to position, but autoclean still leaves the gap. What is wrong with it?
 
O.K., Here is the update. My dealer is reluctant to come out on a service call, so out of frustration I pulled the autoclean assembly, cleaned the rods with a scotchbrite pad, cleaned the firepot bottom plate, lubricated everything, put it back and SAME PROBLEM.
Then I pulled the side cover and got the number off the mother board. It ends in 456-C. Isn't that the old board? My stove was made in Nov. 2008, I thought it was supposed to have the newer 323 board? Anyway, I am thinking that is my problem.
 
Well I have a service call scheduled for next week. I will post an update then. Thanks for all the help guys.
 
Update:
The service tech came out last week. Verified that the autoclean assembly was clean and lubed. Changed the mother board too, problem still not solved. He was on the phone with Quadrafire and had them stumped. Then he took most of the stove apart to get at the autoclean motor and there it was-the screw that connects it to the auto clean arm was loose. He was convinced it must have never been fully tightened during assembly. I asked him about loctite or a lock washer (there are neither) and he made that suggestion to Quadrafire while still on the phone with them. It makes me wonder if this problem didn't happen because my stove was built during the "great stove rush of '08" and Quad was rushing to catch up with order fulfillment. Oh well, this has been my only problem so far and I'm glad it's fixed.
 
Rickster said:
Update:
The service tech came out last week. Verified that the autoclean assembly was clean and lubed. Changed the mother board too, problem still not solved. He was on the phone with Quadrafire and had them stumped. Then he took most of the stove apart to get at the autoclean motor and there it was-the screw that connects it to the auto clean arm was loose. He was convinced it must have never been fully tightened during assembly. I asked him about loctite or a lock washer (there are neither) and he made that suggestion to Quadrafire while still on the phone with them. It makes me wonder if this problem didn't happen because my stove was built during the "great stove rush of '08" and Quad was rushing to catch up with order fulfillment. Oh well, this has been my only problem so far and I'm glad it's fixed.

Thanks for that update. I'm sure there are many of us, including me, that bought our Quads during that time period.
 
The autoclean motor has a home postion somtimes it will skip and screw up other times it's the linkage.
 
I just had to tear my stove down to tighten the set screw too! I took out the floor of the firepot to clean it up cause I thought it was just hanging up. I noticed that it wasn't closing completely during a weekly cleaning...I could tell that the ash pan got way hotter than normal. I put some lock-tite on teh threads when I put it back together...hopefully I don't have to get at that thing again! I hear about a lot of techs replacing that control board....this new age of repair is to replace everything then look for the problem. I don't buy into that at all.
 
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