Trouble Shooting Mastebuilt smoker

[Hawkrod]

I have a Masterbuilt smoker that pulls too much power and trips the GFI outlet when I set time and temp. Do you think this is just a bad heating element or something else?

 

[JLinza]

I would start by checking amps on the breaker, GFCI & smoker. For instance, if it's a 15 amp GFCI, let's say your smoker is pulling 7 amps (not for sure) and it's not a dedicated circuit, you could be maxing out the outlet somewhere else. 7 amps would be close 50% of the full load and those are recommended to handle 80% load on the circuit Extension cords can cause problems as well. Not saying it can't be the element, but I would do my due diligence before I spent money on parts. Maybe some real sparkies will have more to add

 

[garyinmd]

My MES 40 has a 1200 element, so it is 10 amps. Mine was tripping the GFI ( 2 different ones )so I replaced the element and have not had a problem since.

 

[normanaj]

The person you need to converse with is tallbm so I tagged him.

 

[tallbm]

I have a Masterbuilt smoker that pulls too much power and trips the GFI outlet when I set time and temp. Do you think this is just a bad heating element or something else?

High there and welcome!

I can't speak as to it pulling more amps than it should but it is likely that the insulation on your heating element has some tiny cracks and such or there's some crud on it that might be causing issues or something in that regard where it makes your GFI outlet unhappy.

If you hook it up to a non GFI outlet I would run that test and see if it flips your breaker. I bet money it runs fine this way. My element does the same things these days so I just run it on the non GFI outlet and all is well.

I could go and buy a new element for cheap BUT my element is flipped and exposed so it's just a short matter of time before grease gets on it or something happens to cause it to not be 100% ideal and make my GFI unhappy again. So I stick with running it on the non-GFI.

I hope this info helps :D