Temp swings on pitboss 820

[jdalo113]

Hey y’all, my pittboss is about 4 months old.

I use it as both a smoker as well as a grill sometimes. I’m now seeing temp swings tonight. When I first started it, I let it go through the start up process and then turned up to 350.
The temp readout started to blink. It would not hold a flame any higher than about 220.
I reset it, went through the startup again, now it’s working but I’m seeing a fluctuation from 225 up to almost 450 degrees. Any ideas?

 

[vtfarrier]

Have you cleaned the fire box and the temperature probe?

 

[JWFokker]

Was the firepot clean? I've found that you pretty much have to clean it out after every cook. More than about six hours of run time and the ash starts to accumulate and the pellets don't burn properly.