Chargriller 9020 tripping GFCI after 5 minutes

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cxb

Fire Starter
Original poster
Dec 9, 2009
31
10
Worthington Ohio
Had this for a year and I love it. 2 months ago it started popping the GFCI as soon as it was turned on. I troubleshot it down to a bad heater rod and replaced it with a Traeger heating rod, the only brand available locally.

Worked great for a month, no issues. Now it is popping/tripping the GFCI outlet. I have tried eliminating the extension cord. Running another extension cord to a separate outlet which is also a GFCI but it is on another circuit. Has anyone else run into this? What was the fix.

https://www.chargriller.com/products/wood-pro-grill-9020
 
Try not having the cord touch the ground at all.
I ran into this issue with some higher amperage power tools.
 
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Make sure the area near the hot rod's exposed surface is not gunked up with ash. Ash and moisture can cause current to leak to ground. But as the other's have said, GFCI's do go bad.
 
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Make sure the area near the hot rod's exposed surface is not gunked up with ash. Ash and moisture can cause current to leak to ground. But as the other's have said, GFCI's do go bad.
Will open it up and inspect. Would be great if that fixed it.
 
Forgot to mention the worst part of this was I had to use my gas grill to make steaks. Wanted to do a nice reverse sear on the smoker. Smoker flakes out. Spend the1/2 hour playing cord swap. Drink, cuss, repeat. Fire up gas grill too hot. I ended up almost ruining the steak. More drink , cuss, repeat. Arrrgh I hate it when shit doesn’t work!!
 
Forgot to mention the worst part of this was I had to use my gas grill to make steaks. Wanted to do a nice reverse sear on the smoker. Smoker flakes out. Spend the1/2 hour playing cord swap. Drink, cuss, repeat. Fire up gas grill too hot. I ended up almost ruining the steak. More drink , cuss, repeat. Arrrgh I hate it when shit doesn’t work!!

A workaround until you find the cause is to disconnect the hot rod, and use a torch to get the pellets in the fire pot started.
 
Update: Cleaned out the fire pot. Plugged into a non GFI outlet and ran it for 2 hrs. Now it is acting normal on GFI OUTSIDE outlet

Smoke on my brothers!!
 
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