Ran across this today and wanted to get the seasoned kettle users what you think about this 'Kettle Zone Cooking System'. I am not affiliated with this in any way but though this was a great idea. It's up on kickstarter to get in early.
Put a couple of fire bricks on the outside of the charcoal grate, load the charcoal grate with cold charcoal and wood no wider than the end of the CI pan, add a few hot briquettes, put the CI pan on the bricks, add the grill grate with the ends that tilt up to add more charcoal Might work. Going to have to try it.
I have thought about doing something like this by simply suspending a cast iron pizza pan under the grill grate.
I think that it's a sound idea but also think that the cast iron pizza pan would be more durable and I also think that it could be cobbled together for less than the $50 + pledge. (The $50.00 pledge, obviously, has no guarantee that you will wind up with one for that price)
Granted; You don't get the nice new grate, and stone suspension rack, but I would start with a new Weber grate anyway. The stone pieces may well be a better heat sink than a cast iron pizza pan, but I'm not sure that you would benefit a whole lot from that.
My idea is to suspend the CI pan under the grill grate with a combination of appropriate length bolts and fender washers. You may, obviously, need to bore holes through the pizza pan.
In my 18" Kettle, may it RIP, I used to use line up firebricks off to one side, put a charcoal basket behind them, add the cold charcoal/wood, a few hot briquettes, and smoke like that. With the tilt-up grate, I could reload charcoal as needed. It worked basically the same as my Smokenator in the 22". The firebricks have since disappeared (a mystery never solved), but I actually liked smoking that way in the Kettle.
I like that idea, I have an old Char-Broil Kettleman grate that I can use to suspend a round cast iron pizza pan with and then put a grate on top of that.
I didn't know that about Kickstarter, glad I didn't pledge.
Thanks