Bayou Classic cooker burner has too much orange

[wahoowad]

I bought this Bayou Classic model SP10 high pressure cooker from Home Depot a couple weeks ago. I've used a lot of propane equipment, smokers, etc. and have experience adjusting air and babying regulators to get a nice flame. Unfortunately I can't seem to get this new unit figured out and getting a lot of extra orange flame so it isn't working as well as it should.

I'm feeding it from a standard 20 lb BBQ tank that is about half full. I am opening the main tank valve slowly to avoid tripping the safety mechanism in the regulator. I have the air plate on the burner all the way open...closing it only make it worse with more orange flame. Bayou Classic even sent me a new hose/regulator which did not make a difference.

Here are some pics:

propane on high:

Propane turned down some:

propane all the way open:

And for reference is the burner pic that Bayou Classic uses to advertise this product:

I checked for blockages in the burner, even disassembled it to check for slag/roughness inside the burner. It's clean and everything looks good mechanically.

While their pic shows a cast iron burner the unit now ships with a smooth aluminum burner and is stated as such on the box. All I can think is this aluminum burner design is crap, yet I hate to go buy an aftermarket burner like King Kooker although I did that to fix a propane smoker a few years back. Any suggestions to get that orange flame dialed out?

 

[3 Dawg Night]

An orange flame would indicate a rich mixture, so for some reason, the fuel is not mixing with enough O2. If the new hose/regulator didn't help, it's probably a problem with the burner. I'd ask them to send you a new one.

 

[wahoowad]

I have the air intake adjustment maxed out and I feel like it wants more air. I think the burner casting is already letting in the max amount of air even if I was to remove the rotating air intake plate.

 

[ehall]

inside the line that connects to the tank is a 'tip'. the diameter of that hole may be to large, if you can find another one with a much smaller hole, try that. you should only be able to get the very tip of a toothpick in that hole. and then you may have to adjust the damper.

 

[wahoowad]

I have 2 different 10 psi regulator/hose assemblies And it’s the same with both. Both have a tight orifice

 

[ehall]

if that's the case, then maybe go with 3 dawg's advise....

Both have a tight orifice

...she said softly... sorry, I couldn't help myself!

 

[day_trippr]

There's only two things that can cause a rich burn like that shown: airflow restriction, or too much fuel.
I'm guessing the brass orifice fitting at the burner end may not be the right one...

Cheers!

 

[Mark3885]

I have the same bayou classic burner wth the cast iron burner, with the air wide open , I can lift the blue flame up off the burner about 1 “ wide open at the tank, I would say the aluminum burner is your problem.

 

[wahoowad]

Yep, did an experiment this morning and may have found a workaround to their poor design.

I too felt it wasn't getting enough air but I didn't want to permanently the air control by enlarging it. So I took a medium thickness washer and put it between the burner body and the air control plate which will allow more air to leak in. Hooked everything back up and success - almost all the orange was gone. I can tell it is running hotter because it started turning the pot support cherry red right away, where previously it was taking awhile to do that. So basically it is the little sheet metal air control plate that just isn't open enough to feed it all the air it needs. I'll probably just leave my washer in place rather than enlarging those openings in the plate.

There is still another problem but probably not worth obsessing over now that I fixed the main issue. I get significantly more flame/heat exiting the rear of the burner head than the front. And by rear I mean the opposite end from the inlet tube. As you can see in the photo the flame is taller on the left side of the photo than the right, and the rear pot support is heating up and turning red while the other two are not. Undesirable but think it will still work ok. Do you guys see this with other burner heads?

I have a call in to Bayou from before I figured out the workaround, if they bother to call back I'll share my observations with them. I was going to ask them for a replacement burner, preferably a cast burner if they still have any of those, but doubt I'll get anything once they hear I'm burning much better. I had already ordered a King Kooker burner head as I've had great experience with those in the past. I'll give it a try and decide if I want to keep it.

 

[wahoowad]

The aftermarket King Kooker cast iron burner showed up today so I hooked it up to see how well it compares to the cast aluminum one that came with my Bayou unit. Right away it burned exactly like you would expect - nice and steady blue flame that seemed stronger than the flame produced from the cast aluminum burner. Compare this stronger blue flame to the weaker one above:

The original was working so-so after my little modification to add the washer but this King Kooker was clearly putting out more heat by just burning steady and clearer with less orange. I swapped them back and forth a couple times since I couldn't run them in parallel and the King Kooker burner is definitely superior. I assume the King Kooker ran better due to the larger air intake vents as this picture shows (King Kooker on left, Bayou Classic on right):

Oddly they both seem to have the same inner ID of the body/tube so it has to be the Bayou is just starved for O2.

The head of the Bayou cast aluminum looks like it is machined and finished better but whoever designed it probably didn't do so properly or even evaluate how well it performed. Looks like cheapest bid won.

So I'm sticking with the Bayou Classic stand but running the King Kooker burner (WKAF1B). Didn't really like buying the Bayou and then immediately spending more for another burner but it was annoying and I like things to run well. I prefer the Bayou stand over the other brands though.

 

[Gruel]

Maybe you can get some money back from Bayou for a partial return? It can't hurt to try. Tell them you had to buy a replacement part yourself because you couldn't wait.

 

[day_trippr]

Jeeze, had not considered the OP was dealing with a terribly flawed design.
And it's hard to understand why BC switched out the venerable bg10 cast iron burner anyway.
It's hard to believe an aluminum element is cheaper to make...

Cheers!

 

[wahoowad]

I could not find a BTU rating for the KK burner. It seems like it has more heat to give if I went with a 20 psi regulator. Don’t think I’ll bother but maybe a 20 psi reg will magically make itself available.

 

[LittleRiver]

I'm having a similar issue with my BC KAB6, I can never quite get to a pure blue flame.

Thanks for posting this, I'll try the washer to give it more air.

 

[Mark3885]

I just bought 2 of the kab6 , the flame would not stay lit , I cut the air back to about 25 % and it works great . No roaring flame , just a gentle small flame but it is spread out over the whole width of my pot , heats faster than my jet burner. Probably uses the same amount of gas though.

 

[HopSing]

I have the same Bayou burner and had similar issues. I "upgraded" it with a 5" banjo burner from GasOne with little effort. It runs so much quieter and has better heat control.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0719PVZP1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
~HopSing.

 

[wahoowad]

I was getting ready to pack away the Bayou aluminum burner since I'm keeping the King Kooker when I decided to do one more test. I was wondering if I could dremel out the air intake slots in the sheet metal air control - I see room for about 20% increase. But simply removing air intake accomplishes the same thing so that is what I did.

I fired it up and it did seem to run a little better, probably sufficient that I never would have expected an issue if it had run like that out of the box. So if you buy one and having too much orange flame you might be just as well served to try removing the air control before you go throw another $20 at a replacement burner like I did.