Keystoker Too Cold

McGiever wrote:Biggest problem right now seems to be "Not feeding coal fast enough"

I viewed your pics, but am not able to understand what is supposed to happen w/ a Koker feed mechanism. Somebody Help! Does it go CW or CCW???

the nut is to turn CW to increase speed. It is turned as far as possible.

Carbon12 wrote:Seems like the thickness of the coal bed is not all too deep and the strap where the coal is feeding looks skewed a bit. May be the camera angle.

How do you make it thicker? And I think the "strap" is skewed, if the "strap" is that metal plate behind the fire...

That strap is, apparently, adjustable. There are bolts that allow it to be adjusted up or down. I've never personally tried to do it. Requires taking the hopper off apparently. Others with experience should chime in. Somewhat difficult to do, I have heard.

Carbon, the "strap" your looking at I believe is the heat shield plate I had come loose on mine, it's only held on by two small screws & one side might be broken on hers. I don't recall my coal being that deep on mine, I just ran down & looked & mine is the same now with this weather so it may also help prevent the flame going back too far.
Julie, Was there a strip of what looks like door gasket material that rides above the pusher bar to help keep fines & pieces of rice from getting behind it? It could be that the bar is getting hung up on something & not getting full travel, You might want to try backing off on your adjustment a bit, I don't know if it can go too tight & bind but there has to be something wrong. Don't forget that with coal even a slight adjustment takes quite a while before you can actually see the result so you may be going too fast with going one way or the other. If someone can tell you the initial set-up adjustments I'd try going back to that & slowly work from there.

The feed motor is missing the fan blades, they where on the bottom white hub of stoker motor, also there is a piece of insulation missing below the push plate block. The inside of the stove needs to be cleaned thoroughly as well. Most likely the passageways up the back where the exhaust heat exchanger tubes are will also need cleaning, as well as checking the stove pipe. I am basing my suggestions on the pictures referred to in a previous post. Let us know how you make out.
Thanks

samhill wrote:Carbon, the "strap" your looking at I believe is the heat shield plate I had come loose on mine, it's only held on by two small screws & one side might be broken on hers. I don't recall my coal being that deep on mine, I just ran down & looked & mine is the same now with this weather so it may also help prevent the flame going back too far.
Julie, Was there a strip of what looks like door gasket material that rides above the pusher bar to help keep fines & pieces of rice from getting behind it? It could be that the bar is getting hung up on something & not getting full travel, You might want to try backing off on your adjustment a bit, I don't know if it can go too tight & bind but there has to be something wrong. Don't forget that with coal even a slight adjustment takes quite a while before you can actually see the result so you may be going too fast with going one way or the other. If someone can tell you the initial set-up adjustments I'd try going back to that & slowly work from there.

Yes, there is a gasket above the pusher bar. Just called Keystoker and Don thought it might be the gear motor, even though it is running, the pusher bar isn't running as consistently as it was even yesterday. Called Warner's Coal, too of course where we bought the stove, asked them to come out, got a return call trying to relay directions to me over the phone. Someone there thought it might be the pin in the nylon cam...

Usually when we adjust the feed screw, we wait an hour to see what it does, which isn't much. I did buy a gear motor when I bought the blower motor because my husband said the white propeller fan seemed to be stiff at one point. The stove has made some really loud noises which seemed related to the gear motor white fan. We pushed up the fan from underneath a bit, and that stopped the loud noise. I think my husband will try and put the motor on tonight. Trial and error....

2001Sierra wrote:The feed motor is missing the fan blades, they where on the bottom white hub of stoker motor, also there is a piece of insulation missing below the push plate block. The inside of the stove needs to be cleaned thoroughly as well. Most likely the passageways up the back where the exhaust heat exchanger tubes are will also need cleaning, as well as checking the stove pipe. I am basing my suggestions on the pictures referred to in a previous post. Let us know how you make out.
Thanks

There are two propellers broken off the fan, but it is spinning in the photos, so you can't see the other two in place. The store where we bought the stove has removed their propeller fan...Stove was cleaned before we started burning this November. But cleaning doesn't address the slow feed problem.

I saw this posting was still active and I concur with Don. That gear-motor is 5 years old......and its time for a new one. By the way, my first call would have been to Don and the good folks at Keystoker. I hope you ordered the gear-motor, and unfortunately you will be -20 ish tonight, but help would be on the way. My other suggestion has already been made and that is to clean and vac the rear corners where the air tubes pass. You might overlook them if there were a small amount of ash in the base. Normally the timer and controls get mounted on the damned hopper, but you can carefully remove them (turn power off, please) and the feed motor will be right there. What condition is the off center nylon cam in? If there are any grooves in it, perhaps Don already suggested to include a replacement cam. The little fan blade in that gear-motor does a great job of blowing dust away from and cool the motor. Careful, they snap easily. Oh, dinky screws, hard to reach with farmer hands...nice to have a young person handy.

FYI I just checked my koker. Stroke is about 5/8 of an inch and each stroke takes 34seconds.

whistlenut wrote:I saw this posting was still active and I concur with Don. That gear-motor is 5 years old......and its time for a new one. By the way, my first call would have been to Don and the good folks at Keystoker. I hope you ordered the gear-motor, and unfortunately you will be -20 ish tonight, but help would be on the way. My other suggestion has already been made and that is to clean and vac the rear corners where the air tubes pass. You might overlook them if there were a small amount of ash in the base. Normally the timer and controls get mounted on the damned hopper, but you can carefully remove them (turn power off, please) and the feed motor will be right there. What condition is the off center nylon cam in? If there are any grooves in it, perhaps Don already suggested to include a replacement cam. The little fan blade in that gear-motor does a great job of blowing dust away from and cool the motor. Careful, they snap easily. Oh, dinky screws, hard to reach with farmer hands...nice to have a young person handy.

I did already buy it--just in case...husband is trying to install now. Pray:)

shanedoe wrote:FYI I just checked my koker. Stroke is about 5/8 of an inch and each stroke takes 34seconds.

That's about what the stroke length is, but seems to me it used to be longer? And the time it takes is about 5 seconds, and still not feeding...I'm going to give my husband a coat hanger to check in front of push plate into stove area...

In the pic of the burning coal, you see the plate in the back on top of the coal? Mine sits about level with the top of the side pieces to allow full flow of coal. Your problem is definitely the amount of coal being pushed.



You will need to watch the feed motor and nylon cam. It is a 1 RPM feed rate while the motor is running. If you are not up to temp, the feed motor should be running constantly. Watch it and see. It should be very easy to see it moving back and forth consistently.

It should look like this on full burn…actually should be able to push coal off the end.

Is that a DHW loop in the photo?

Yes.