Char-Griller Smokin Pro with firebox- Mods

[hacksawdwyer]

Unscrew the pipe and use a hacksaw to cut just above the flare. I had use of a plasma cutter so it was easy peasy for me. If you have a welding shop around they will cut it for about 5 bucks.

 

[alelover]

Mine wasn't flared. Like Merv said. They must have changed it recently. Mine was pretty short. There really wasn't any I could cut off. Did they lengthen it and flare it?

 

[bass28in]

Thanks for all the help everyone!!

So I decided to give my rig a test run before making mods to the stack to do the stack mod (that makes sense...I think). A couple days ago I lubed her up with oil and fired her up. I pushed the tuning plates around a bit and got the temps within 5 degrees side to side!! ...then all the powder coat bubbled up and fell off the top of the SFB

. It let off some awful smells too so I built a good hot fire to burn off anything that might make my food taste bad for my first cook. Anyone have this problem? Did you repaint or just rub with oil?

I decided I would cook some food over the weekend before smoking the turkey for Thanksgiving. I brined a 4 pound chicken and rubs downed some ribs on Saturday night. 4 hours on Sunday (today), slow and low with cherry wood. Check out the results...

This was hands down the BEST Q I HAVE EVER MADE!!! Nothing that came out of my Brinkmann vertical water smoker was ever this juicy, tender, or yummy. Any advice on cleaning my CG out and keeping it sanitary? I heated it up to 325-350 after my cook to caramelized grease and fat but it's still nasty in there. I definitely don't want to get family and friends sick on Thanksgiving.

Any advise on minimizing fire maintenance? This is my first time using a Texas style smoker. I'm gearing up for a long smoke on Thanksgiving and I'd rather spend time with my guests than tending my fire. My charcoal basket is 12x14x6. Sunday (today) I filled the basket 2/3 with unlit briquettes and dumped a lit chimney on top. 20 mins later the whole thing was lit up and 2 hours after that I needed to add more fuel. That seems really inefficient.

At one point I added a log of cherry wood on the coals for smoke, but got a lot of heat from it...way more then the charcoal was putting out. The only problem I had with the wood was controlling the heat. If I tightened the damper too soon I got a lot of thick grey smoke (not the thin blue stuff) and the wood would smother out. If I left the damper open I would overheat the cooking chamber. I found myself opening the SFB door so the wood can burn, letting the temp fall to 210, then closing the door and until the temp got to 250, then opening the door again. That cycle went on and on and on and on until the wood charred into coals. Anyone cook with wood instead of charcoal that can help me?

Gotta love SMF!!

Thanks in advance!!

 

[venture]

I generally cook with lump (natural wood) charcoal.  I used to add wood chunks until Todd came up with the Amazen smoker products.  Now I use them instead of wood chunks.

Depending on ambients, I usually tend my fire every 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  That is the price you pay for a charcoal offset unit, but the flavor is worth it in my estimation.

It looks like you are on your way.  You will find that perfect combo soon now!

Good luck and good smoking.

 

[hacksawdwyer]

I use a modified gas burner inside my firebox and just throw large blocks of oak in it and it keeps going at a constant temperture. I have boufght three 12lb turkeys to smoke on Thanksgiving. I hope I have enough room...

 

[JckDanls 07]

Bass28in, I would reccomend NOT useing whole logs and just use chunks (fist size or smaller). Sure you have to tend to it a lil more often, a couple of chunks every 30 minutes or so... But far much better. As far as putting enough fuel in to not have to tend it for hours, will never happen, you'll have to add charcoal every hour or so... GL with your birds

 

[bass28in]

Thanks for all the advise!! I'll keep you updated after TG.

So what does everyone do to clean/sanitize their cooker?

Lang BBQ smokers website has articles and videos on getting the smoker hot (300F) and spraying the inside down with water to create steam. Does anyone do this with their CG? Should I? If not, how do you keep it clean/sanitary?

 

[thsmormonsmokes]

Hey guys, I just stumbled onto this thread, and it's been like a ray from Heaven.  I'm a total noob to true BBQ (though I CRUSHED a turkey on Thanksgiving.  Beginner's luck, I guess), and I recently bought the CGSP with SFB and have been occupying lots of my spare time modifying it.  I've been working on building a suitable charcoal basket for Minion cooking.  Yesterday I bought some angle iron and welded a box frame, filling the sides and bottom with 1/16" expando, only to discover that I'd mis-measured the opening to the SFB.  It'd fit like a charm inside the SFB, but it's too big to fit through the opening.  Damn.  But I've got some ideas on how I'm going to get this job done, and it gives me a project to work on next week.  I'll post pics once I've gotten it done successfully.

Here are my questions.

1. Right out of the box, the paint on the top of the SFB bubbled up and flaked off, leaving exposed metal.  It's only a matter of time before it starts to rust, I'd have to think.  Any suggestions on how to handle this?  Is there a suitable paint that will last?  I'd rather not have to keep firing it to burn off contaminants that I don't want in my food every time I have to re-paint due to loss of cheap paint/powder coat.

2. Has anyone else had problems with the grill grates in the cooking chamber warping?  I think it happened to mine when I fired it the first time to burn off all the packing chemicals and other nastiness I don't want in my food.  Has anyone bothered with fabricating their own, or is this more trouble than it's worth?  -Another thing I'm trying to learn in my spare time is how to weld, so that could be a fun project. 

3. What is the best caulk-type material to use to seal up leaks?  Mine leaks right around the smoke stack opening, and some leaks from the lid of the SFB that I'd like to plug up.  Are leaks on the SFB worth worrying about that much?

4. What is the best way to seal the gap between the lid and the lower half?  Mine was leaking smoke so bad from there when I first got it that there wasn't much smoke leaving the stack.  I bought a fireplace rope that I glued into place using the adhesive that came with it, and that's helped considerably.  But the adhesive is garbage.  The sides are staying put, but the front has come off 1.5 smokes after installation.  My thought is to get some 1/2" or 3/4" aluminum angle, bolt it to the lower half, then pack the gap in with fireplace rope, like someone suggested in this thread probably 4 years ago.  I also heard somewhere of loading the lid with fireplace caulk, putting saran wrap over it, then dropping the lid to give a custom fit gasket.  Anybody use this method?

Pics are vastly preferable, if they're available.  It helps a ton to see ideas.  Plus that's usually when I have new ideas of my own.  And if there are pics earlier in this monster of a thread and I just missed them, feel free to point them out rather than going to the effort of re-posting.

Again, thanks to everyone for their input on this thread.  This is an absolute gold mine of info.  Someone should assemble this into a mod manual and sell it to Char-Griller.

 

[fjcooper]

Here is another way to lower the smoke intake about six inches on the Char-Griller Smokin Pro: Use a tin can about the size of a Bush's Bean Can (?) measuring about 3-1/4 inches across the end; remove both ends to create a cylinder; make inward snips on the rim of the can, about 3/4 inches apart, which will create tabs; bend the tabs outward slightly and fit the can over the smoke intake. The cylinder will snap into place when the rim of the can clears the ridge on the smoke intake.

 

[thsmormonsmokes]

OK, some of the bigger mods are complete and I thought I'd post a few pics.  What I've done is similar to what people have posted earlier in the thread.

First, my charcoal basket mod.  I wanted to maximize the amount of charcoal I can get in there for Minion Method cooking.  I'm assuming that more is better, particularly since a fair amount of my smoking will be done in cold weather out here in Utah during late fall and winter months (temps in the 20s or so).  After being really frustrated that my really big basket I welded together a few weeks ago wouldn't fit through the SFB door, and that the door was small enough that you can't fit a box through it to maximize the space inside the SFB, I realized that I could fit the floor and walls to a big basket into the SFB individually, and then assemble the basket inside the SFB.  I love it when inspiration strikes.  

The first step was to bolt 2 pieces of 1" flat iron inside the SFB for the basket to sit on.  The ash tray rail wasn't quite enough to hold the whole thing on its own, so I bolted my 3/4" flat iron even with the ash tray rail using stainless steel nuts, bolts and washers.  Then I cut a piece of 1/8" thick expanded metal (appx dimensions of 18"x13", I think.  I can't remember for sure so take your own measurements if you're going to do it this way) and set it on the rails.  Since the size of my basket bottom was kind of big, it went in easiest by pulling out the ash pan and putting it in through the side of the SFB, as opposed to trying to wedge it in through the SFB door.  From there, I cut out pieces for the walls of the basket.  IIRC, I cut 2 18"x8" pieces and 2 13"x8" pieces.  But again, take your own measurements to make sure.  I used tie wire to hold it all together, and assembled it inside the SFB.  So my finished product gives me a basket way bigger than anything you could dream of fitting through the door.  Final dimensions were 17.5" x 12.5" x 8".  I think it will hold a full 16 lb bag of Kingston briquettes if I wanted that much fuel.  Here's pics of the finished product (sorry I didn't take pics of the project as I progressed; I left my camera at work the day I did this):

Last night I installed a baffle and tuning plate rails.  That was a lot easier than I thought.  The mounting rails for the tuning plates went in first.  Borrowing someone else's idea, I used 3/4" wide flat iron for the rail.  I cut two 22.5" pieces, and drilled holes to match the bolts that hold the cooking chamber to the legs.  Then I just slapped the rails on those bolts and held them down with the nuts that came with the smoker.  The only trick was getting the holes drilled in the right place.  I had to bore one out pretty big to compensate for a bad measurement.  That's when I was glad I got 3/4" flat iron so my margin of error was pretty big.  Also, be mindful of how tight you crank the nuts.  If you tighten them real tight it bows the flat iron, which could create issues with your tuning plates fitting properly.

Side note: ^^This pic^^ shows my fiberglass rope I used to try to plug the leaks out of the cooking chamber lid.  It's fiberglass rope that you use for wood burning stoves.  I picked it up at Lowes as well, although I had to talk to 4 or 5 guys before I got someone that knew what the hell I was talking about.  As much as I like seeing college kids working their way through school, it's a little frustrating when you know what you want and all you get is dudes who don't need to shave yet looking at you like you've got corn growing out your ears when you tell them what you're looking for.  Anyway, I used the adhesive that came with the rope and as you can see, it's garbage.  I clamped it down pretty tight when I put it on, and this is after 1 smoke and a dry run or two.  I bought some RTV high temp gasket maker and I'm going to use that re-do this mod.  Plus I think I'm putting it on the lid this time since I think it will be more effective there than on the bottom.  But so far the rope seems to have addressed a substantial leak issue the smoker had out of the box.  (On my first fire I had so much smoke coming out of the lid that not much was going out of the chimney).

Now for the baffle.  I got a stainless steel piano hinge at Lowes, eyeballed how long I wanted it, then used a grinder with a cutoff wheel to hack it down to size, and bolted it on to the wall of the cooking chamber.  Mounting the hinge straight is pretty critical if the baffle is going to swing without smacking into the wall of the cooking chamber, so what I did was to use a few C-clamps to hold it in place, then measured the distance between the top of the piano hinge to the lip of the bottom half of the chamber and made small adjustments until it was 2" dead on all the way across the piano hinge.  Then I drilled the holes into the wall of the cooking chamber with the piano hinge in place to ensure I was drilling in the right spot, and bolted it into place, again using stainless steel bolts, washers and nuts.

The baffle is 16 gauge plate steel I bought at Lowes.  I would have gone for heavier, figuring that heavier steel will help temp stabilization more, but 16 gauge was as the heaviest plates Lowes had.  I did my baffle shaping kind of rough and ready.  Because the cooking chamber is a cylinder, if you want a flush fit, your baffle would have to be rounded to match it.  That's a far cry beyond my metal working abilities, so I just cut it straight.  It's 19" across the top, which fits pretty snug.  It's 16.25" across the bottom, which also fits pretty snug up against the tuning plate rails.  That is to say that there are no right angles on the baffle plate.  It's kind of hard to see in the pics, but the baffle is actually a trapezoid shape (for the geometry impaired: http://www.mathleague.com/help/geometry/polygons.htm#trapezoid), and not a rectangle.  There's a bit of a gap due to my straight cut on the baffle being up against the rounded side of the cooking chamber, but I don't think it's anything to worry about.  

Also, before you go making the angle cuts from the top edge to the bottom, it's a good idea to make a cardboard template to make sure you've got the fit you want, trace your template onto your metal, and then make your cuts.  

From there it was simply a matter of cutting out my tuning plates.  Here's where I could use some input.  My thought was to arrange my tuning plates something like this:

Obviously I'm going to have to do some fine tuning.  But am I leaving too much open space between tuning plates?  I'm almost wondering if I shouldn't cut out one more tuning plate to take up some of the space so the gaps aren't as big, then rig it for reverse flow (which I'll do by running my aluminum dryer hose chimney extension to the SFB side like someone suggested earlier in the thread, rather than go to the trouble of installing a chimney on the SFB side).  Any input on this aspect of things would be appreciated.

Anyway, once I have the chimney extension installed and my fiberglass rope lid seal done, I'll be ready to do dry run it to burn all the nastiness off all the new steel I've put in there, then I'm smoking a turkey on Christmas again.  I've actually had as much fun working on mods as I do smoking stuff, and that's saying something.  Thanks again for everyone's input.  I'm about as happy as a puppy with two peckers over this whole deal.

 

[wmarkw]

Do any of you use a wind break? I need one but not sure what I should use to make one.  Fought the wind a little bit and had to wheel the firebox side of the grill into the garage.  Is the rule of thumb to keep the firebox out of direct wind; so if the wind is going directly into the firebox, I should rotate it? 

 

[bruno994]

ThsMormonSmokes...how did your mods work out for you?  I am anxious to find out, especially the baffle and tuning plates.  I am cooking with a Chargriller DUO with the SFB addition.  Obviously I have a bit smaller cooking chamber on mine than the Smokin' Pro, but I have tried a few of the mods mentioned in this thread with some moderate success.  I installed 2 new therms on either side of my grill (Old Country from Academy, both dialed in the 212 degree boiling water test), I have extended the stack to grate level, flipped over the main chamber charcoal tray and purchased a stainless steel grill wok from Academy for my charcoal basket in the firebox to allow me to do the minion method.  Since I have made these mods, my temp from one side to the other has been near dead on.  Dead center on the grill the temp stays about 10 higher than the edges.  But, I have had hell keeping temps up the past few weekends since making these changes.  Seems like I can't give it enough fuel to get it between 225 and 250 (my preferred temps for smoking most everything that I have tried over the years).  I use a combination of charcoal (Kingsford briquettes and mesquite lump along with wood chunks, mostly mesquite with some oak.  I feel like one problem is the capacity of the wok that I am using for a charcoal basket.  I believe I need a larger basket to allow for a longer burn using the minion method and to be able to pile more wood on top of the charcoal to get my temps up. 

 

[raa171]

ThsMormonSmoke.....What for RTV did you purchase to create your gasket in lieu of the fiberglass?  I'm having the same trouble but not sure what type of RTV gasket to use.

 

[venture]

I was at Lowes yesterday and checked out their display model of the CGSP.

Indeed, the chimney extension into the pit has been flared out.  Another method will need to be found to attach the extension on the newer models. They managed a change which will serve to make simple things difficult. fjcooper in post #234 offers a method I have seen others use, but you will have to find the right can for that. I have also seen people roll up thin pieces of metal to slightly larger than the inside diameter of the chimney, squeeze it just enough to fit into the chimney and allow it to expand back out to form a seal.

Another change I noted was that the football shaped opening on the pit where the fire box attaches is now attached with bolts rather than being a knock out item for attaching the SFB.  This one I see as an improvement.

Good luck and good smoking.

 

[alelover]

Knocking that football out was a pain. End up bending the crap out of it if your not careful. Don't ask me how I know.

 

[alelover]

3. What is the best caulk-type material to use to seal up leaks?  Mine leaks right around the smoke stack opening, and some leaks from the lid of the SFB that I'd like to plug up.  Are leaks on the SFB worth worrying about that much?

I used this and it's still sealing after over a year. Still holding my stove rope on too.

 

[venture]

You got that right, Scott.  I did mine very carefully and it was a painful process, but it worked without making it look like a junk yard candidate.

How nice it must be to remove some bolts and nuts and lift the dang thing out of there!

The chimney deal?  GRRRR!

Good luck and good smoking.

 

[thsmormonsmokes]

I was at Lowes yesterday and checked out their display model of the CGSP.

Indeed, the chimney extension into the pit has been flared out.  Another method will need to be found to attach the extension on the newer models. They managed a change which will serve to make simple things difficult. fjcooper in post #234 offers a method I have seen others use, but you will have to find the right can for that. I have also seen people roll up thin pieces of metal to slightly larger than the inside diameter of the chimney, squeeze it just enough to fit into the chimney and allow it to expand back out to form a seal.

All I did was grab a set of channel locks and bend on the flange to straighten it out until I could fit my dryer hose over it.  Once I got the hose seated, I bound the hose to the chimney with tie wire to make sure it stays put.  It was only slightly less redneck than doing it with duct tape, but I'm not trying to impress anyone.  It got the job done.

 

[venture]

Hey!  I didn't always live in California?

Rednecks are my kind of people!

Good luck and good smoking.

 

[jasot217]

Gentleman, 

Santa brought me my Char Griller Duo, with a firebox. I have been using a smoke hollow gas smoker, so this wood smoking is a new thing. I am having a few issues. 

1. I have to prop open the firebox door to sustain a fire. My vents are open on both ends, all the way, and my chimney is open. What is causing this? My thought is maybe I am using too large of logs, as they are about as long as the firebox. 

2. I can't maintain the inside temp where I want it. It's getting too hot. I want to keep it around 230-250 F, it's all I can do to get it to 240, most of the time it wants to climb to 260, 280, 300.

3. Please explain what the dryer hose does. I thought one wanted the whole chamber filled with smoke, seems like this would keep it under the rack, then draw it out before it's filled with smoke. 

any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. 

thanks

jason