Friendly reminder for pellet stoves doing the "Sawdust Ditty" inside the back!

Replace you worn out lower auger bushing and maybe end plate too and gasket. Clean your upper auger bushing and auger. Replace your auger motor if it is old and very tired. I.E. Windings on the magnetic coil have worn laminations and gearbox has worn gears if motor is very old.

A worn bushing can allow sawdust to be sucked into the convection blower and come out heated as a spark in the front of the stove! ! !

See pics of a 15 year old St Croix with original parts and mound of sawdust under the auger motor. A tell tail sign of a worn lower auger bushing.
Pic 1 - worn bronze oil lite bushing. Worn ring scored into the outside, black and dirty and dry on the inside. These impregnated oil bushings dry out from the heat!
Pic 2 - tired auger motor and sawdust falling out of hopper!
Pic 3 - sawdust mound like a baseball's pitchers mound accumulating on bottom of stove! LOL
Pic 4 - new gasket, bushing, and auger motor and clean auger and chute inside!

 

magic

 

Also
On stoves with a 3/4" diameter auger shaft like the Hudson River West Point and Saranac and the Enviro EF2 and EF3 you can upgrade the bearing and end plate to Nylatron so they will last as long as the Whitfields ! ! !

 

Some stoves have the lower flange of the auger tube "Skip welded" (Not 100% around the tube to prevent the tube from warping)
Then the area is covered with a layer of high temp silicone to seal the lower end of the tube to flange joint.

Although this does work, it is a tad cheezy and if the silicone seal breaks loose there can be serious leaks of the "sawdust" AND in some cases whole pellets or pieces can pop out.

My Whitfield Advantage 2 T (Recent acquisition) had a half a 5 gallon pail of pellets in the mechanical cabinet when I opened it to service and clean things.

The squirrel cage room air fan was nearly full of pellets and vibrated so bad it shook the stove terribly.

I was not sure of the source of pellets as there seemed to be no logical "leak" anywhere.

After I had the stove running and was testing some voltages on the motors I was suddenly hit in the face by a pellet.


Hmmmmm.

After a bit another pellet popped out into the cabinet and landed by the fan.

I got a mirror and looked behind the flange and soon another pellet popped out of a hole in the silicone sealer.

After shutting things off and cleaning the area up it was obvious what the problem was.

The silicone had come loose from the metal tube/flange area and there was a fairly large gap under the silicone.

Really a very poor design to begin with, but the silicone had worked for many years.

Cleaned off all the old silicone and wiped the area with brakekleen to remove any oily residue, then added a new layer of GOOP to seal the gap.

As Don mentioned, the bushings do wear and will allow the fine saw dust to sift through the gap.

The nylatron bushings are a great upgrade and require no lubricant.

The factory bushings in many cases were just stuck into the sheet metal end plate and after a time begin to turn in the plate as opposed to the shaft turning in the bushing.

When this happens the bearing surface is only the thickness of the sheet metal (14 or 16 gauge) and soon the bushing has a groove worn in the outer diameter.

I have seen these bushings worn completely in two at this spot.

A repair can be made in a few different ways.

1- as Don mentioned, the new nylatron bushing that has a nut that secures the bushing in the plate.

2- Either peening the bore from the lower side after a new bushing is installed or using some silicone (little bit) between the bushing flange and the plate to secure it.

3- If you have tools such as a drill and things, a small hole can be drilled along side the bushing and carefully through the edge of the bushing flange and a small Allen head bolt (8-32) installed with the head of the bolt fitted into the little notch in the bushing head.
Care must be taken to keep the head of the bolt well below the bushings to edge where the auger rides.
(Half the bushing flange thickness is great)

These mods will keep the bushing from turning in the plate and the auger/motor happy.

On one unit I experimented with turning a groove in the auger shaft and installing an O ring that sealed just below the flange of the bushing.

This seemed to work sweet.

I greased the bushing lightly with graphite type wheel bearing grease and let it rip.

Great thread Don, and a place that certainly needs attention from time to time

 

Thanks Snowy and thanks for your comments too.
Here is a pic of the Whitfield Quest stove's original bearing and end plate and the new Nylatron bearing and end plate that I just installed.

I see the black silicone above the end plate in pic 2 - Is that where your stove was leaking the sawdust Snowy?

Click on pics to enlarge:
Pic 1 - original bronze oil lite bearing & end plate
Pic 2 - new Nylatron bearing & end plate. Comes with a new black rubber high temp gasket.