After switching from an FEC 100 which I used for nearly 10 years in a small seasonal restaurant I purchased a new FEC 120 for my personal use at home. The main reason for not getting another 100 was several fires in the 100 and liked the idea of getting the fire pot out of the cooking chamber.
From the first cook forward the 120 has not been a good experience as it would overshoot temp settings sometimes more than 100 degrees, the hold feature would never get below about 250 even though the cooking temp may have been in the 215 - 225 range and more times then not it will go out in between burn times and when it tries to relight the hopper will be full and running over causing a huge temp overshoot. It would be nice to have the option to just shut down the cooker instead of cooking at non controllable temps when it goes into hold mode.
I did spend time talking with Bill at cookshack about the temp overshoots and overcooking and drying out the product when the unit was fairly new and he did send me a different auger that did seem to slow down the feed of pellets which did seem to help on the temp overshoots and I believe there was a software update that didn't seem to change anything. The suggestion on the drying problem is to put a whole bunch of water pans in the smoker when cooking it will help with the drying out.
My FEC 100 did a great job and it had the older Treager controller. Has anyone done a retro fit back to basic controller? I have had good results also with PID controllers to upgrade older smokers but they are not pellet cookers so running the convection fans would probably be a problem.
If anyone else has worked through these problems and has had luck solving them I would sure like to learn what you have done.
