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Check your Rational SCC oven hoses
I maintain SCC ovens dated from 2004 to present. All of those have Rational’s built-in self-cleaning feature to a certain degree (cleanjet only or cleanjet+carecontrol).
One of our 2010 model ovens recently took a dump on me…LITERALLY. The steam generator’s drain pump hose ruptured during a cleaning cycle, thus pouring an acidic cleaning solution down into the component compartment. It subsequently shorted something out and blew a fuse. Consequently, over $1100 in cruddy, corroded motorized parts had to be replaced.
My advice to everyone is to check the drain hose, cleanjet pressure (outlet) hose…and ALL pressurized hoses during your next service call. Feel the hoses as you would when exploring a car’s radiator hose when looking for weak (soft) spots. If a hose appears to be getting soft, REPLACE it!
$30 to $60 in new hoses can save a customer much down time and the huge expense in other replacement parts.
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11 Replies
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Let’s face it, there is no known material that is flexible that can last for long periods of service with extreme heat, pressure, PH, cold, salt’s, ozone, or UV. They can engineer materials that may last a period of normal service for one of these, but not multiple. So they have to give up longitude of one or the other. . And the longer it is made to last, the more expensive it gets. With a Combi oven’s boiler that requires heat and acid cleaning of the minerals, and the constant temperature changing. It’s hard to find the perfect material. Every heating and cooling creates expansion and contraction. I’m surprised that Rational doesn’t have a replacement set period to replace them.
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Always check the boiler top hose that goes to the cook chamber. Especially on the 480 volt units. For some reason, high humidity in the control cabinet and 480 volt open circuitry motors don’t work well together. Go figger…
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The destructive power of 480 and up can be very explosive. I once had a 500 amp fused disconnect that after a night of heavy fog decided to light up across the pole insulators. Bit scary with the later fire. Definitely gets the heart rate up.
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As far as a set period for replacement of the hoses, I can say it does not exist. There are many factors contributing to the failure of the hoses. There is one user in particular, where I was replacing the door gasket every 90 days, and the steam tube every 180 days. This high maintenance customer insisted in using the combi in “hot air mode” at 475 degF at 0% humidity, high RPM in constant mode. The rubber components simply crumble over time. Other users of frequent failure of the cleanjet hoses, was due to multiple batches daily of roasting prime rib. The fatty residue would erode the suction and discharge hoses from the inside, as ECTOFIX stated, without squeezing the hose, they would appear to be in perfect condition visually. So yeah, squeeze those hoses, like the Charmin Man would !
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What a waste of a high tech combi oven
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We have ONE kitchen where they’ve chosen to use a SCC101 as their saute oven. 425°F all day long. The oven that I rebuilt 2 1/2 years ago. That aggravates the HE…uh – garbage (alternate dirty word) out of me.
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There are cutting edge Chef’s , and then there are Chef’s that are in a rut and just want to collect their check. They refuse to read, upgrade their knowledge or change the way they do things unless forced by someone with more power or if a outsider can prove a better way.
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Ahh…I can’t be too critical of our Chefs since I know how our kitchens are arranged. The Chefs are merely using what tools that are there…in the best ways that serve their needs.
In many of our kitchens, the combi-ovens only see use as just a steamer. WHY? Because they’re sitting right next to or just a few feet from a set of double-stacked convection ovens.
As for the oven in my video, it’s in the front kitchen and within view of customers – so I guess it’s sort of an impressive show piece. That area also happens to be the short order/expo area, so I personally don’t think a combi-oven belongs there. YET…since it’s there and because it really pounds heat into the food, they either saute in it or keep the skillets preheated for doing so.
That restaurant also has two other comb-ovens in their prep kitchen…where they DO actually use (at various times) all three of the cooking modes (and the meat probes) that they’re designed with.
However fixbear, you ARE correct in that our Chefs aren’t capitalizing on ALL the technology that their combi-ovens offer. Of our twenty-two Rationals seeing daily use, maybe ONE KITCHEN actually uses the built-in cook programming to some degree. Otherwise, all those fancy oven control panels merely serve as nothing more than for selecting a cook mode, cook temperature and cook time.
REASONS WHY the Chefs don’t capitalize on these oven’s programming features?
It might be a matter of Chef’s PRIDE – riding their confidence in their experience and abilities, maybe they resist any notion of having to rely on some oven’s built-in programming to control the finer details of their cooking. YET, if they actually DID use that programming, they’d realize that there would be FAR more consistency in the final products they’re serving.OR…
It might be a mix between the Chef’s many OTHER “must-be-done” duties (which ALREADY has most of them working 10-12 hours a day) and the intimidating complexity of combi-ovens being just enough to dissuade them from taking the time necessary to become knowledgeable on their oven’s true capabilities.That latter statement is likely more true than we might think.
While the Europeans invented combi-ovens and have used them for more than forty years, the U.S. market (as a whole) didn’t initially accept them because they were too complicated. So…why spend so much on an oven with so many complicated features when JUST a basic oven and JUST a basic steamer – when bought TOGETHER…was still thousands of dollars cheaper than buying a combi-oven?
It was only within the last dozen or so years that the U.S finally started seeing them as a common and essential appliance in our kitchens – thanks to MAJOR improvements in user-interface.
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The difficulty of the man vs. computer is the major problem. Most Americans tend to just dive in without reading the manual first till they have a problem. Then they get frustrated because the manual is not easy to interpret the content. Many Chef’s became Chef’s because they didn’t lie classroom learning or reading. Mind you I’m not saying all. I’m certain that in the near future we’ll see more stultification and even verbal commands. Like Prime rib, 12 pounds each, bone in. And the oven repsond’s with either program review or options and time. I don’t think we are far away from that.
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If I recall correctly Rational says 2 years max on average for hoses. But it depends on the usage of the oven.
The suction and pressure hose for the cleanjet pump is not so critical as they may not drip on anything (change as needed) but go by customer needs/use. (well, pressure hose will leak on cleanjet pump). Sometimes it is cheaper to do it proactively vs. reactively especially if travel is involved. A combiduo (stacked units) I would change proactively as it can drip on bottom unit.
Rational has been pushing pm programs that include the emptying hose and steam hoses (recent improvements, lets see). A leaking steam hose is just as bad as the emptying hose.
I have seen customers hoses and door gaskets last a long time (over 3 years) and some needing replacement in less than a year or sometimes just months. The difference was hours and temperatures of cooking. A high volume customer will need more maintenance (and should be able to afford it in this case).
If I can figure out how to do attachments, I’ll try to insert some documentation.
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