Brand new and in need of help!

[jehiatt]

Hoping I've come to the right place- we have had a Traegar grill since 2012 and my husband is the grill master in this house! Unfortunately he got the itch to upgrade to a larger unit and made a bad trade from someone who took advantage of us. Now we have a Traegar that was extremely dirty and leaves black soot on every meal we try to make and pours out black smoke. My husband kept our Traegar in immaculate condition and now we have one that seems ruined. He's given it a deep cleaning twice and still it does that. He won't use it anymore for fear of making us sick. We don't know what to do and he is so upset with himself for trading our beloved Traegar he won't even talk about it. Does anyone have any advice on how we could get this grill in usable condition again?
Hoping one of you experts can help me- I would love to get this fixed for him so he can enjoy his passion for grilling again. Thanks in advance.

 

[wayne gray]

Have you tried running it on high temp.For maybe 3-4 hours.To see if will burn off what's causing the black smoke? Can't hurt.

 

[SmokinAl]

First of all welcome to SMF!

I'm not familiar with your smoker, but if it's a pellet smoker, then if you post your questions in the pellet smoker section, I think you will get better answers there.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/f/3141/pellet-smokers

Also would you swing by "Roll Call" & introduce yourself, so we can all welcome you to SMF!

Al

 

[jehiatt]

Thanks both of you very much for your suggestions. I am making a list of all the ideas I gather to try and we will attempt to get it fixed up one by one!!

 

[joe black]

Welcome to this great site.

I don't know how you tried to clean this unit, but it sounds like you will need to get aggressive. Try a long handled wire brush and scrub the entire inside, including the grates. After that spray the inside with a good, strong cleaner, like simple green, etc. Then hose it down with a very strong water spray. If you had access to a pressure washer, that would be even better. If it's as bad as you say, I would rent one.

After it is cleaned out, season it really well with a good cooking oil.

Good luck with it. Joe