Clean Burn Leading to problems with bands?

moo4me

I recently submitted a Warranty claim for my cracked fire ring, and I picked up the replacement one that arrived at my local dealer yesterday.  Since I now have a brand new fire ring, I figured this morning would be a good time to do a Clean Burn on the egg, to get the other ceramic parts cleaner as well, before putting the new fire ring in place.

I got my Large BGE humming to around 700F for 1 hour or so.  I then opened the Egg to inspect, and then upon closing it again, noticed it did not close as normal.  There was major resistance as it closed and was a pretty significant underbite.  I opened it back up to see that the back part of the gasket (nearest the hinge) was now all "wadded up".  This is why when closing the dome there was resistance.  It seems this happened because the bands may have moved.  So now my gasket is jacked up, and there is a severe Underbite on the egg, of just over 1/2" (don't mind the pink ruler).  Prior to this, my egg has had about 1/4" underbite, but now is much worse.  I never made an effort to correct the 1/4" underbite, since it had never leaked smoke or had any impact on how the egg performed.

My question is, can doing a clean burn like this effect the bands due to the high heat, and permit them to move?  And does anyone have good advice as to fixing the Underbite.  I know I also will need to replace my Gasket, and will likely plan to go with a Rutland as many have mentioned on the forum.  

Any help is appreciated...thanks.

1voyager

I had the same issue.

The bands are covered under warranty.

I took a few pictures, including removing the bands to show how warped they were, and emailed to BGE. No problem in getting replacement bands at no charge.

Lesson I learned: No more clean burns. 550 - 600 degrees for pizza is as high as I will go.

Definitely go with Rutland.

feef706

I'll wait for the experts to chime in but your bands look loose, the bolts have no bend at all in them, they should be evenly tightened and have some significant bend once tightened enough.

SemolinaPilchard

When I do a clean burn I no longer open the egg. At high temps the bands get flexible and when opened the weight of the dome can throw them out of whack. That happened on one of them during a clean burn.

moo4me

So do you suggest closing the dome, loosening the bands, adjust dome as needed, and tighten bands again to see if it corrects the problem of the underbite? 

Regarding the bands being loose - originally when I was tightening the bands I heard the ceramic make a cracking noise so I instantly stopped tightening out of fear of cracking the dome. 

RRP

moo4me said:

So do you suggest closing the dome, loosening the bands, adjust dome as needed, and tighten bands again to see if it corrects the problem of the underbite? 

Regarding the bands being loose - originally when I was tightening the bands I heard the ceramic make a cracking noise so I instantly stopped tightening out of fear of cracking the dome. 

You could not crack the dome by tightening the bands. My guess is your bands were not straight and what you heard was the cracking of the green glaze as it was caught in the cross bind.

moo4me

Ok thanks @RRP

Do you advise I should go ahead with loosening the bands with some closed, attempt to adjust dome, and retighten bands?

RRP

If your band is the old style it alone is the problem. The new band makes correcting that easier. OTOH here is a solution which have proved VERY helpful and popular on this forum

Overbite/Underbite: A quote from a poster

"I called this morning and spoke to Dewayne at BGE HQ Customer Service.  He was extremely helpful and guided me through the steps to level out the top.  It was extremely simple to do, even for someone who didn't understand the way these things are put together. 

So basically here's what was the problem and what I did.  The first problem was that the lower band was not wrapped around evenly - it was lower in the rear than in the front.  He explained to me that the lower band should come right up to the edge of the lower gasket all the way around the lower half.  So I loosened the carriage bolt on the lower rear band and GENTLY tapped along the band using a block of wood and a rubber mallet until the band was placed evenly around the whole bottom.  Then I tightened the band.  From that point, the underbite had improved significantly, but there was still a bit of unevenness along the planes where the gaskets met and it still did not pass the dollar bill test.  In fact, the gap on the rear side between the gaskets was slightly worse, but I wasn't worried because I knew there were a couple more steps to 

Next step was to adjust the front to back placement to fine tune the sitting of the top to the bottom.  There are two slotted acorn nuts on the top part of the hinge (above the spring) on both sides of the top that needed to be loosened so that I can 'wiggle' the top into a centered position.  So I loosened all 4 nuts, wiggled it into position, then tightened.  Now the top was centered properly (no under or overbite), but there was still unevenness on the plane of contact - in other words, it still failed the dollar bill test. 

The last step was to somewhat repeat the first step (loosening the carriage bolt) except for the upper band.  Wherever there was the largest gap between the two gaskets, I GENTLY tapped the band upward which essentially pushed the lid downward by it's own weight.  Once I saw that the upper band was positioned in such a way that the entire top part of the egg sat nicely and evenly on the bottom, I tightened the carriage bolt of the top band and vuala!  It was fixed.  Dollar bill test passed all the way around the egg.  No more underbite (or overbite). “

Mattman3969

Main advise is don't do nuclear burns.  550-600 will clean any funk that your egg has.