I am beginning to doubt the fuel too - I have 200 bushels in a gravity wagon sitting outside, but it is covered, and worked fine covered just like this last winter. I'll get some tested tomorrow if I can.

Tried re-starting on 5 after lubing the combustion blower, but only lasted about 20 minutes. 'caught' it and was able to put it into shutdown for awhile to burn up the fuel and get it back to hot. Restarted before that went out and am now going to try on level 3 with less air than I usually do. I am able to control inlet air with a Banjo ball valve I installed 4 years ago. We'll see how tonight goes.

Ok - umm - may have fixed it. Got home and checked out exhaust - completely clean. Pulled exhaust blower - completely clean and spins great. Added about 50% pellets to the hopper. Started it up and it lasted 10 minutes before flame went out. Decided to try cleaning hopper one last time. Took every bit of corn out of hopper, and saw buildup of fines on left side of auger. Vacuumed it until it was spotless. Started it up 35 minutes ago and now it's burning great.... Darn it - should have listened to ya'll. Good news is my corn is probably ok. Wasn't looking forward to trying to get more - would have had to disconnect my gravity basement corn delivery setup, and try to pull a gravity wagon with 200 bushels in it through snow covered yard. And then put it back... Anyway, keeping my fingers crossed. Oh, and I broke my low temp snap disk taking the combustion blower out. So I gotta get another one of those too.

www.iburncorn.com/new-forum/8-general-co...-to-clean-the-hopper

That's what I'm talk'in about.

Glad that you're back in biz, Scotty, and that the prob was easily fixed.
You're a good man for coming clean, so-to-speak .

Glad to hear you got it going, no fun without it.

Never had this problem with mine, (other than a bad motor) but it's good to know so I have something to check if I run into a similar problem.

Do you clean your corn or run it as is from the mill? I run mine through a screener I made and it takes out a lot of the fines but there is still some in there. They seem to flow up the auger tube and burn just the same.

Well, back to square one. Taking corn to be moisture tested tomorrow. It burnt well from about 10 p.m. to sometime between 3 and 6 am. Came down to a burn pot full of corn this morning. It's about gotta be wet corn, but it was 14.5% when I brought it home. It's outside, but well covered, and worked with the same bin and same cover all last winter.

Ouch, Scotty .

For a quick & dirty moisture test, see what happens when you crush a kernel with pliers. Crumbles = dry, mush = wet.

The pliers test is a safe variant of the old farmer's bite test.

Edit: If you store a sealed bucket of corn indoors, do you see condensation in the bucket after a couple days or so? Yes = very wet, perhaps > 20%. (Been there)

Tried the plier test - it shatters/crumbles. No mush/wet at all. Nope - no condensation in bucket at all. Huh? what now?

These mystery problems are never easy. You just have to keep looking for the reason. Is the burn pot sealing, fitting flat all the way around where it sits? A warped burn pot can cause burn problems.

It's still worthwhile to have your corn tested, just to eliminate it as a possible cause.

To complicate matters, your problem was a compound one. Those are always tough. You've solved part of it; i.e., the partially blocked auger opening. As TC says, there's still the possibility of a hidden leak or vent problem. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if the unblocked auger has compromised your air/fuel ratio that you might have tried to optimize while your auger was partially blocked. You might need to readjust the air for the new feed rate.