I went back to lowes & kicked the ok. joes tires & took a good look at everything they had. one lesson is take notes. the ok joe is 3/32" metal not 3/16" like I posted above. something stood out though. looking at the ok joe longhorn I can see that the metal gauge, components, welds, fit, finish, size, etc. are nearly identical to the older brinkman pitmaster deluxe that I just picked up at the scrap yard. the chargrill models are about the same as the newer brinkman horizontal models that I looked at being closed out at home depot. I wonder if these were built at the same or neighboring job shops.
you know this is worse than shopping for a truck. I looked at bellfab, gator, tejas, hoder.............the list goes on & most are out of my price range. the price of shipping has gotten to be just plain stupid so with the weight of these things I need to find something relatively nearby. the drive to acadamy is at least $40.00 in fuel. I think that for now I will cool my jets, clean up & use the pitmaster & keep looking & researching. there is nothing urgent about this. in april I have to go to a farm & pick up some hives near academy so I can check out the old country smokers.
more questions:
all the research I've done points to attaching the exhaust stack below the food grates. lyfe tyme, gators, & yoder all have stacks above the grate. do these stacks extend down internally?
are these horizontal offsets fuel hogs??
