Egg Lid not closing properly

sllofoot

Hey guys,

Last cook I did was Pizza and I wanted to try around 650-700.  Got distracted.  Was well over 1000 (to be honest; when I walked up and saw the gauge I thought it was at 0 before I felt the heat coming from the and had to be very careful burping it to keep from losing all my arm hair.  Oops.   Now, the lid doesn't close quite squarely.  I'm worried I messed something up letting the head get away from me.

When it's closing it shifts sideways right before being down and leaves about 1/4" of gasket showing on the right side, bottom.  Since that means there's 1/4" of gasket being exposed on the inside as well, I figure my gasket is going up in smoke shortly if I try to cook with it.   As a result, I've been eggless for almost two weeks and the natives are getting restless.

Any tips on what to look for to fix this?  

Thanks for the advice.

Eggdicted_Dawgfan

@sllofoot do you have a picture you could share? Possible your bands have slipped a bit. I'm no expert but a picture will really help the pros here help you fix your issue.

sllofoot

Thanks for the tip- sorry it took me a while to get these here.   I'm not sure the pictures turned out very well; the others were blurry and not worth posting.  If anyone has any advice or requests of what I need to show in pictures I'll try again tomorrow.

Thanks again for the help.

dougcrann

I have been fighting an over (under?) bite on our Large. After being told by several folks it is "normal" I contacted Bruce at BGE....he sent me a new band/hinge kit....under warranty 

1move

Check your bolts on the hinge mechanism. Loosen them slightly and realign then retighten and you should be good to go. Tighten evenly one side halfway then the other and so on so it doesn't fall out of alignment again

poster

get used to it, happens everytime I do something over 500, the bands slip. I put a lot of time into playing with it, and I gave up. I wait for the hinges to rub on my table and interfere with the lid opening, then I loosen everything up, swap out the bolts re-torque and start over again. It really is a crappy design. Some people have more issues than others, yours sounds to behave similar to mine. Just keep an eye on it from getting too loose, you don't wanna lose a lid

Ivanhoe

Completely agree with you Poster - I have a love hate relationship on my pizza cooks. Love the pizza, hate the band slippage afterward. This last time, when my pizza cook was done, I went around and tapped on different parts of the band assembly with a hammer & wood block (and yes I made sure the bands were in fact loose) where it was really out of alignment. It kept my underbite from being over 1/4" to about 1/8".

DieselkW

Don't do what I did and spend an entire Saturday taking the hinge apart - it's not the hinge, it's the bands.
Loosen the bands, adjust them to an even distance from the felt all the way around, then tighten. Check that they're staying put as you tighten - like every couple of turns on the nut (not you, the one on the bolt) check the distance all the way around.
Top and bottom, tighten them up.

Then the next cook, take that 1/2" wrench with you, and tighten AGAIN when the dome gets hot, because it will "stretch" when it heats up.

It's a never ending battle, and I've learned to live with a slight underbite.

sllofoot

Thanks for the tips.   I guess the band slippage is definitely what we're looking at.   I'm not particularly impressed with the difference in tightness of top and bottom band. 



Top bolt is bending and it still appears to be much looser.    I loosened them both off and tried to reposition the bands but I'm not quite certain where they were supposed to be in the first place.   They appear to have been fairly close to the gasket lip but it looks like maybe they were intended to be further apart; the groove in the ceramic is much broader and there's ample room to move them apart.

I found this picture in the manual that came with it:



Those little red spacers didn't make it home with me.  Hard to look a gift egg in the mouth, but I kinda wish this had been given to me disassembled so I could've at least been certain I had all of the hardware.  Spacers may not seem important, but if the design is such that I'm going to need them regularly because of band slippage then I'd like to have them.

Do any of you position the bands without these?  If so, how wide of a spacing do you leave between top and bottom band?   Thanks for the advice in advance.

Begger

My XL has had an UNDERBITE since Day 2.    The nice guys at the dealer came out and readjusted, but it's back to underbite within a couple cooks.   I personally think the hinge design sucks.  

NonaScott

With the spacers the bands end up right at the lip of ceramic where it meets felt on both top and bottom on mine

sllofoot

If anyone is feeling exceptionally bored, would y'all mind measuring the spacer for me sometime?  I'll cut pieces of flat to make my own spacers if just winging it leaves me feeling unsatisfied.  I guess the distance between bands at the back is the distance they should be all the way around since the hinge is (theoretically) a constant.

GoooDawgs

sllofoot said:

If anyone is feeling exceptionally bored, would y'all mind measuring the spacer for me sometime?  I'll cut pieces of flat to make my own spacers if just winging it leaves me feeling unsatisfied.  I guess the distance between bands at the back is the distance they should be all the way around since the hinge is (theoretically) a constant.

I'd just swing by any BGE dealer in your area and I'm sure they'd give you a handful of spacers.  

Most people use them the first couple of attempts at repositioning the bands,  and then you slowly start to eyeball it as you learn what space works for your egg as they're all slightly different with alignment,  gasket thickness,  etc.

Good luck! 

g37

My egg was assembled  by the dealer also so i never  had those  spacers.   Last month  i emailed  BGE and they sent me the spacers and plastic spring retainers  for free.  

GatoGordo

dougcrann said:

I have been fighting an over (under?) bite on our Large. After being told by several folks it is "normal" I contacted Bruce at BGE....he sent me a new band/hinge kit....under warranty 

Did the new hinge fix your problem?

stompbox

My hinge also creeeeeeeeeeaaaaaks when it is opened.

NPHuskerFL

The hinge design has a lot to be desired IMHO