Englander 25 PDVC

So with this "arctic blast" in front of me I decided to clean out and fire up the Englander for some much needed supplemental heat.
I did the usual deep cleaning in the fall and and did a dry run afterward, had no issues.
Last eve, I thew in a handfull of pellets in front of the ignitor and had flames in side of two minutes all seemed well untill I checked it again 15 minutes later to find it was shut down and thowing an E-2 error code. Did some FHC searching and read a bunch on faulty vacuum switch/plugged vac hole/cracked vac hose issues. checked everything out to find none of these issues but did find 2 others.....Upper auger locked up tight, and lower auger not spinning at all.(Can't believe I did not see this to begin with).

I believe I need a new lower auger drive motor as I did get it to spin, but only with some manual manipulation.

My question is this: does anyone know how often the augers wear out? I remember this happening at the end of last year (auger jam) and attributed it to crappy pellets/fines.
I removed the upper drive motor and manually spun the auger, it seemed to have some up/down side to side play and a bit of rub on the tube. I don't know whether this is normal or not.

Any thoughts?

 

IIRC there is bit of wiggle in PDVC line see the section on auger alignment in the fine manual. If aligned correctly it will not rub. Now the top motor gets intermittent use the bottom unit gets continuous use the OEM parts were only rated intermittent use. This leads to issues with the bottom motor, sometimes swapping the motors buys you some time. I will not tell you what I think of this trick.

 

Thanks STB

 

As luck would have it, last night it jammed up again. Turns out the lower motor is fubar.....
2 new Gleason Avery's on the way.

 

Now you know why I don't like the trick, good Gleason continuous duty units and welcome to the GA club.

 

I didn't do the swap.
Makes no sense to me...

 

Not worth the time nor effort when the stove is going to be run hot due to cold. Motors will likely seize as folks have discovered.

 

Yes, you rang?

 

If you need one in a pinch, hit me up, I have a couple sitting here that will get you buy....No charge, I'll even send it to you.

 

Greatly appreciated, you guys rock as usual.
This is only supplemental heat to the woodbeast, and I've got oil that was cheapy cheap.

The motors should be here by Wed of this coming week.

Again, thanks for the offer!

Hey, does anyone grease those bearing blocks, if so what with???

High temp synthetic?

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

I never greased mine but I did only have it a few years. That hi-temp should be good.

 

So just a quick update, I got two new GA drive assembly's in last Friday and installed both. Whie I had the motors out I decided to pull the bearings and augers to look them over. I noticed the factory finish on the augers to be incredibly rough and irregular (see stock pic).
I wondered if there would be any merit to smoothing them out, so I used my 1.5" wide stationary belt grinder to give it a try.
I wish I took pics of the finished product so you can see, as it has made a huge difference in the feeding and noise level in pellets being pushed.
There used to be a grinding/crunching as the lower auger pushed them in, now nothing!

In the pic below notice how th flights are very rough and there are bumps and mounds along the casting line. a narrow wheel on the belt grinder fit well in between the flights and smoothed everything out. My augers now have a "polished" look.


If you have the equipment/time I highly suggest doing this, even if it is with a dremel.
-Also, the GA motors are high quality (with bearings) and are virtually silent!

 

You 100% did the right thing by "polishing" it!

 

That's what I try too tell the wife .

 

And if she's not buying it , polish it your self