Manual lighting when igniter fails

Igniter failure will be the most common one with your Traeger Smoker. Mine went out the other day after a little over 2 years of heavy use. I use it 2 to 3 times a week even in the winter. Luckily it failed by opening up instead of shorting out so it didn’t blow a fuse.
If you do blow a fuse or trip a GFI unit the first thing to do is find the igniter wires and unplug it and try again.

After waiting too long for mine to light I shut it off, and checked the fire pot it was about half full of fresh pellets. Traegers manual says to use gel lighter fluid to light and after it gets burning turn the smoker on Smoke mode, replace heat shield, drip pan and grate.

I had a MAAP gas torch handy so that’s what I used to light mine. A butane torch might not work as well since they don’t burn as well when held with torch held down. The MAAP torch worked great, the nozzle reaches the fire pot & after about 40 seconds the pellets were burning well.

I manually lit the smoker twice before getting around to calling Traeger service. Traeger is noted for having good service and true to form they were great for me. I had registered my Smoker so they had all my info on record and about 3 minutes on the phone they said we will ship a new igniter!

Two more tips in the photo below, I have a galvanized bucket I use to load pellets. I always have a roll of paper towels out when cooking and after many windy days blowing the towels around I finally said “dummy put them in the bucket”!

Smokin Don