Then there's the automatic damper. Right after it was installed, I had the dealer back out to look at the damper because it was sticking open. He told me it was working fine and not to worry about it. I got by for a while by not opening it all the way and manually shutting when it stuck open. About 2 months later, the connecting linkage fell apart and the damper was stuck closed. This couldn't be over ridden so I had the dealer back to fix it. After this, the damper was sticking open again so I decided to look it myself.

The timer spring wasn't strong enough to pull the sliding linkage back closed. The linkage was really sloppy and would bind up very easily. After assessing the situation, I came up with a real slick solution.

I removed the automatic linkage that is connected with the main damper slider. I didn't have the outside convection air hooked up so I made a new linkage that connected to the outside convection air lever instead. It was real easy to disable the outside convection air damper so the only thing the lever had to operate was the automatic damper. The lever was a pivot rather than a slide so it operates much more smoothly and doesn't bind up. Now the automatic damper is real easy to set at any opening level and it always closes by it self. Much easier to control the fire. I could send a sketch if anyone is interested.

I showed my mod to a friend who also has a 7100 and he's going to do the same to his.