Help with VC defiant encore 2140

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The_new_guy

New Member
Sep 1, 2014
7
Georgia
First off thanks for any help given. So I got a FREE stove today and I must say I don't know much about them. It is in several pieces from where the guy took it apart before me and he broke a white Styrofoam looking piece that's in it. (I know it's not Styrofoam just the easiest way of describing it). My question is, is this heater worth rebuilding or should I just buy a new cheaper heater? The heath is not my main source of heat but I'll be used to help give the heat and air unit a break and if the power happens to go out. I live in NW part of GA so it ddoesn't get extremely cold here to much so just guessing the heater will get used very little.
 
Its probably gonna be a wash. It's going to cost about $700 for all the parts you will need. That box you are seeing is the combustion box that houses the catalyst. It's all very expensive, if it also needs a damper frame and lower fire back. It could be as much as $1,000 to fix.
 
Also, is it possible to post pix in this site? If so could you explain and I'll post some.
When you want to post something, there is a tab at the bottom that says "upload a file". That's where it will let you upload pics.
 
I believe it has all the parts just needs a new combustion box. I found that part for $3XX.XX online. But I'm not educated on these things in the least. Would I be better to go to say the Tractor Supply/Lowe's/Home Depot and but a $500 ish heater?
 
Not necessarily. Its a good heater, but if its forced to produce more heat than it's designed to it'll blow out parts again.
What does the catalyst look like?
 
That would be great if that's all you need. I'll bet it needs a cat too.
 
How can I tell it if need one? All the passage ways are clear and seems to be intact. The heater came from my grandfather's cabin at the lake which is a vacation home so it didn't see daily use or even once a week use. Just as we would go on the weekends in the winter. Honestly I have no idea what caused him to take it apart or why he let my nephew stab that part to death with a screw driver. But it has ended up at my house now cause he's going to buy a new stove for up there and a part of me wants to keep this one just because it's 7 years younger than I am and I have a lot of memories from going up there and feeding it. That being said I don't want to spend as much rebuilding this one as I could buy a new one for.
 
If its intact and has had limited use, then I'd try it! Its likely ok given its history.
 
I'm also fixing one up at the moment. It needed several parts though.
 

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Do you have a Web site saying how everything go back together on it?
No, just ask on here. Many folks know those stoves well. I'll be glad to answer any question you might have.
 
Hi new guy, welcome.

The part you broke is typically called the refractory box. That material is actually a fibrous ceramic. As others have mentioned if the stove has been used long enough to wear it out and the catalyst has not been replaced, it will be due as well. Catalysts are supposedly good for about 10,000 hours burn time.

Assume you will need to regasket the entire stove as well.

Whether or not you need any of the iron replaced depends on how hard the stove was run. If its bad enough that you can tell just looking at it (like a panel burned through or badly bent) the stove probably needs a complete teardown and full rebuild which will get prohibitively expensive... Barring that, if you need to replace anything you will only find out when you take a panel out and its warped bad enough that it wont bolt back in.

Understand that this is not going to be a walk in the park. Tearing down and rebuilding one of these, even just removing the inner panels to replace the combustion parts is a lot of time consuming, fussy and messy work. I did this job on my stove last year and you can read the thread if you like to get an idea of what you are in for:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/encore-2550-rebuild-start-to-finish.112149/

Particularly look at page 8 which has links to all the parts sources and links to the service manuals you will need. Note that your 2140 is a slightly different design than mine and will be a bit more work with the bolted in lower fire back.


If you have more questiosn ask away. @Defiant and @BrowningBAR also have extensive experience rebuilding these.
 
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