VC 2550 newbie (kinda) help

[PowerGuy]

Long time on and off reader first time poster.
First off I would like to thank you for what I have learned and that this stove can be a PIA, I am not completely crazy and that when running right can be a great stove.

A little (Long) background on this, skip this part if you want to go right to where I need help.

This 2550 came with the house I bought in Sept. 2013. I have never owned a wood stove before and other than feeding friends stoves didn't have much experience so I read the book and lit it off when I was there not really knowing much other than I didn't want to burn the house down and what the book said and it made nice heat. For the 2014-15 season I cleaned it up a bit looked up the chimney and that looked pretty good so I lit if off. First couple fires where good then suddenly I didn't have much control and was seeing 700+ top temps. I started reading more here. Found that I had a missing left door glass gasket. That lead me to replacing door gaskets, left door glass (I broke it installing the glass gasket), and ash pan gasket. I also found that the lower fireback was cracked in 2 places, which upon removal found an almost nonexistent cat and refractory in rough shape. I ordered the parts I knew I needed. I found there was a broken bolt in the upper fireback and was worried about breaking the side wear plate bolts. I was getting to the coldest part of the winter so I pulled out the cat, slapped in a new lower fireback and ran the stove like that for the season with pretty good results.

Fast forward to last weekend. A fried of mine that is really good at extracting broken bolts came over and we tore into it. Pulled all the insides out, he removed all the broken bolts and we put it back together with the new refectory and cat and fired it up. It seemed to run well but took it's time in doing so. I have a learning curve now having a new cat in there. I need to adjust my primary air control, at half throttle the "valve" is closed. The secondary air seems to be doing it's job correctly from what I have read so far, but may replace it anyhow while I am trying to get this stove to run as it should. During my post op research I realized I forgot to install the gasket in the lower fireback and finally found (it's not in the service manual) that the upper indeed needs to be gasketed/cemented so it will be coming back apart at which time I will also do the damper, side wear plate, griddle and right glass gasket. However before I order the remainder of the gaskets and parts that I may need I want to run it a couple of times to figure out if I might need any other parts. This finally got me to the questions...

The questions. Which I have spent hours (often getting distracted by other posts) looking for the answers that elude me so...

Does anyone have a procedure on adjusting the primary air valve cable?

(edit)Where can I get a K type thermocouple probe?
I have decided on getting an Auber AT100 to monitor cat temps. I can not find a definitive recommendation on a probe to use with it. From the posts I have read (not on a 2550) it seems people are using 6" long probes, in my measurements it seems I should be using a 4" long probe but can not seems to find one rated for up to 2000F.

Sorry for the log post but I understand how background on things really does help to solve problems and answer questions.
Thanks in advance for the help,
K

 

[Diabel]

Welcome to the forum.
Any type k probe will be fine as long as it is rated above 2000*
It needs to be 4"

In my opinion you should rebuild this stove completely not in stages. By doing it in stages, you will never achieve the proper performance out of this unit. Plus, you will be replacing expensive parts several times in the process due to overfired.

 

[droppinloads]

This stove also came with a house I bought & i've run into some similar issues as you (besides cracked fireback). i found parts were just going to be way too expensive so i replaced the stove. Not very helpful I guess, but i thought i'd share

 

[PowerGuy]

Welcome to the forum.
Any type k probe will be fine as long as it is rated above 2000*
It needs to be 4"

In my opinion you should rebuild this stove completely not in stages. By doing it in stages, you will never achieve the proper performance out of this unit. Plus, you will be replacing expensive parts several times in the process due to overfired.

Thank you Diabel. I thought it should be a 4" probe. Trouble is I could not find one online when I was looking last night. Can anyone can point me in a direction to where they got theirs?

I fully understand your point about rebuilding all at once, that is what would have happened if I had read more before we opened it up last weekend. I would consider it done for this season if I had not found that the upper fireback is supposed to have cement/gaskets as everything else other than the primary air adjustment looks good and seems to be operating correctly. Now that I know I have to pull it back apart to do the upper I may as well do the damper and side plate gaskets that I was not aware of the first time, in hopes of not having to tear into this thing for a long time if ever again. I am thinking that once I get the cat temp probe in and lower fireback gasketed it will run ok but not 100% with out the upper done and I can trouble shoot and do the "flame leak test" to see what parts I may need and order them all at once.

This stove also came with a house I bought & i've run into some similar issues as you (besides cracked fireback). i found parts were just going to be way too expensive so i replaced the stove. Not very helpful I guess, but i thought i'd share

I did read your posts, and if I had the cash I would have made sense if I hadn't already had money into parts from last heating season sitting in the box so I have to run this thing a few years to get my money out of it. In that time a lot might change with the house and my free wood supply will likely run out. I may look for stove that is not as needy as the VC. I did start looking at Harman last night but it seems they can be a bit finicky as well. A friend of mine has an older Harman and that is like a light it and forget it until it needs fuel. Most people I know run simple non cat stoves some of them a pretty old. I would much rather have something like that.