Anybody own the Harman 52i service rail kit?

I have not yet attempted this maneuver, but it is on my to-do list this off season. I'm not going to try this while it's cold, but sometime this warm season when I'm not using the stove, it's on my list.

I know it doesn't help you right now, but I am glad to be able to have the benefit of your experiences before I try.

 

Phil, I did it! And I am happy because there was like a quarter cup of pellet crap in there. But I've nailed the process down.

So to recap, you need to pull the ash lip out. I noted earlier in this thread that if you have any of the screws in the red circles behind the side doors, you need to remove them. Pull the lip right out. At this point you either build or buy a kit that you can slide the stove out on. It's kind of heavy so before I started, I made sure you burn down all the pellets in the hopper as that's like another 40+ lbs I didn't have to pull out. Also, I removed the medallion, cast iron panels, etc from the front of the stove as well. Basically all the stuff you remove when you clean it from the front and all that crap has to weigh 10 lbs at least.

Unhinge the latches on the sides of the stove and open the side doors wide open. Use jambs or whatever to keep them open. Now pull the stove out like six inches with care not to stress or damage the fragile electrical connections and wires on the stove's control panel. You need to do this so you can disconnect the power supply and other electrical connections that obstruct your ability to slide it entirely out. The panel that you need to unscrew is on the left side of the stove. It's the main control panel of the stove. There are 2 vertical screws toward the front door which you need to remove that hold the panel in place. Slide the cover to the left or towards the back of the stove. This will expose the main circuit board on the underside. I took a picture of it with my phone so I could reconnect all the wires later. I also disconnected the fewest wires possible -- only the ones that were too short and would yank the board if left them in. In my case, I removed exactly 3 connections. Your configuration may differ.

Once I was sure I did not damage any electrical connections and freed it of the containing ones, I continued to pull the stove out until it was fully out on my service kit rails and gave myself enough access room. I was then able to find and access the feeder panel through the back of the stove. It has a tight wing nut pinning the panel of the chamber. I had to entirely remove the nut. Now the easy part, or so i thought. I had to clean out the gunk in the chamber. Only problem is even with the panel off, the space is so tight and the entrance to the chamber is at a 90 degree angle from the back of the stove that it's hard to get to and clean. The tight space, as shown in a photos earlier in this thread, is very small and I had to get clever. I used the skinniest attachment on my shop-vac and then inserted 3 large straws into it. I then had to approach it at the few angles I could from the side of the stove -- and it worked!

This is also a great time to clean the exhaust from the backside.

 

Here is a connection I had to remove because the wire was to short. If not, it would have ripped out.



I had to remove 2 attachments on the motherboard because the wire were too short. Actually it was a positive and negative -- so really only one.



This is the pellet feeder chamber from the rear with the cover on:



Here's a picture of the cover and wing nut on my glass table. As you can see there is an open slot on the top that must be lifted off the metal latch on top of the chamber.



Now, I had to create a tool to vacuum out the chamber -- I attached 3 large straws to a small shop-vac attachment. Didn't even require tape. I just shoved them in there. It worked great!

 

you may want to consider making your self one of these for your vac.

 

Did you have trouble replacing the wingnut? I'm asking because my FS Accentra was a PIA to replace so I gizmoed a slightly larger nut and tacked it to the inside of the wingnut to allow the aligning it straight so threads started easier. Without it was always a PIA to get it started threading, maybe hobbit hands would of help me along with the chore
Screening your pellets could help you not needing to clean it as often, just a thought
If you need a pic on the wingnut, let me know

 

That's great !!! I guess the rail kit made this much easier so its worth having-which is why Harman feels the need to get too much money for it

Regarding the wing nut. On mine I can loosen the nut almost to the end, pull the bottom of the plate out a little and then lift it off the slotted hing portion up top. No need to remove the wing nut all the way. I cant imagine that if you can get the to wing nut then you wont be able to lift the plate off of the upper flange. But then again, its a different setup than the P series.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the help. I'm sure with these details, mine will be a piece of cake.

I won't know until I try, but I believe I've got enough hearth out front that I might not need any sort of support rig. I'm hoping I can pull it out far enough to give mine a reach-around without it going over the front lip of the brick.

 

Did you make that or buy?

 

If I didn't have a bad hand, I may have opted for building my own. But the nice thing about the rail kit is I didn't have to lift the stove at any point. I have read in other threads about folks who almost dropped the stove and as a result decided to buy the rail kit. Considering I'm the dropping type and I wasn't required to lift it, I'm glad I bought it. I'm sure there are clever ways around it but having it sure made the process a whole lot easier.

 

Maybe but I think you'll find you need enough room to see the chamber. It's bulky and has enough stuff compacted in there it makes it hard to get your arms around things and get the right angle and leverage to remove the nut and plate. But not impossible. I do recall thinking I wish there was slightly a little more room -- in that I wish the kit allowed me to slide it out a bit more. But it was enough.

 

You guys are great and somehow I knew I didn't leave enough info. My wife was getting on me though for spending so much time in the forums that I cut it a bit short. Plus I never know who is reading and if I should bother w/ excessive detail. Ha.

I do think ti would have been possible to remove the plate w/o removing the wingnut entirely off but at this point I was running short on patience and didn't feel like messing around with the 'sweet' spot on how far out the wing nut needed to go before I could remove the plate. The main issue is the plate needs to be lifted up a centimeter or so to get off the metal lip but there's not enough room to lift it straight up and out so you you have to lift up and then swing the bottom up and out. When I first tried it, the plate hit the nut and got stuck. I probably only undid it maybe half the way? So at that point I just made an executive decision and removed it. I remember thinking as Ivan has suggested that it may be wise to keep the nut on the thread because of difficulties reattaching it. It was a bit of a pain to screw it back on the thread but I was able to do it with a bit of struggle. It wasn't horrible but it did take me a few tries. I'm not all in but I'm leaning towards having to remove the whole thing. Just know it's not impossible to screw the wing nut back on if you have to.

 

Made it, had everything needed laying around the garage.

 

I found this on "another" site. Looks interesting. Price is right.

"A useful vac extension i made out of a 2 dollar kerosene siphon/pump from ace hardware. I cut the corigated hose off and wrapped electrical tape around one end till it fit snug inmy shopvac hose and it can get into all the nooks and crannies ive run into on 5 diff stoves."

Dayton Hand Drum Pump, Siphon, Polyethylene 38Y789 | Zoro.com

 

I bought a couple of those at that price. ^^^

 

Nice writeup dotman17 ! Congrats on getting it done!

 

pictures of my 'rail kit' built with what was at hand



I needed to pull the stove out to replace the igniter assembly. the wiring is in the rear so you have to reach around the stove to get to it.

The biggest problem with replacing the igniter is in trying to line up the screw hole in the housing to re-assemble it. It's all done blind, with dirty hands and in a tight space. It should be designed with two studs you slip in the holes and install a couple of nuts on the front. I do have an idea for the next time - use a pick to line up one hole and install the screw in the other. that will at least get you close.

 

That's a cheapo rail system Not knocking the work only agreeing on the expenditure
If someone would feel unsafe, you could use 2x6's or 2x10's

 

This thread has been great. Lots of good ideas in here with perhaps Art's one of the best. It's cool because he provides a picture. I hope this thread becomes/remains publicly available because there's not much out there. The 52i is a great stove methinks but it is poorly documented on how to clean the interior and the Interwebz provides few answers.