I had neglected to pull the shield off of the auger in the hopper and clean it out for the past few months, the result was an auger jam at 3 AM this morning.

It was packed in very tight, the little bits of sawdust and chips that accumulated quickly.

Thanks for the reminder! Sorry it was under bad circumstances

I cannot complain, it was 38 degrees outside instead of -10. And once I figured out it was not feeding pellets, I had it fixed in and fired up in 20 minutes.

Good job trouble shooting. You know since these burners never get run during the warm weather the only time we run into problems is when the stoves are needed. Yes you are lucky it was mild, that alone can help think things out knowing you're not going to freeze within a couple of hours.
That's like a couple of weeks ago me cleaning the room fan, I usually do it in the spring and being that I don't run it until fall never noticed the big difference in how it blowed. Having run the stove some this fall and then cleaning it...WOW! I think I will now clean it at least once during the heating season, it's easy enough to do and improves the amount of air/heat blowing that it's well worth a little extra cleaning while shut down for a regular cleaning.

I took your advice and did a little preventative cleaning and was suprised at how much dust my room fan had accumulated already. All these little preventative measures will definately help us keep our stoves burning for a long time.

In a related question, I have read in a few posts over the past year of people greasing the various components 'zerks'. I assumed they were addressing accessible grease fittings but I pulled the sides of to clean inside the stove this weekend and could not find any exposed grease 'zerk' fittings. I was hoping to top those off as well on the auger and agitator.

Any ideas?

Happy New Year. The zerks are something you have to add. Go to the post at the top of this forum, 6039 manuals tips and tricks, then scroll down to: Re-lubricating the Agitator gearbox by SidecarFlip. He made a great how to on the subject. Auger gearbox is the same to add the zerk. A lot of great info in that thread.
Don't use to heavy of grease. I used a green synthetic and it bound up the gear box and I had to clean it out and replace with a regular high temp grease, everything has been fine since. I don't use the agitator but have a zerk on the auger gear box and fill it every spring at least.

That's where I saw it, thanks FirePot.

I will have to get up the courage to give this a try. Looks simple enough, but I have little experience with a tap.

Ya it's pretty soft metal so make sure you have the proper drill bit size for the tap. Drill slow and straight. Then when you go to tap go slow until it bites, move backward (counter clockwise) until you feel it clear what you tapped, a little hangup from were the teeth started cutting, move clockwise again slowly until it bites a little, back off again and keep repeating until the tap turns without binding.
Sometimes you might want to clear the tap of filings, have a small wire brush to clean it off.
It's soft and thin so it won't take long, just don't rush it, back and forth a little at a time and you will be fine. Just don't force it, taps break pretty easy and a little oil helps.
Make sure you clean any filings from the gearbox before putting it back together so nothing binds up the gears.