Dyna Glo vertical smoker mods

[guitarman023]

Hey guys, wanted to post my experiences with my new vertical smoker so far. I've made quite a few modifications to help out. Here is my new smoker:

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

After reading through this forum, I didn't even fire it up until I got gaskets on the doors and sealed every bolt and hole on it with food grade high temp silicone.

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

My first run on the smoker was kind of a bust, this thing has two large vents, that don't shut completely. I have no idea why there were two, but during my smoke, I taped one off with high temp duct tape and that got my temps down to under 300. Even with the other vent completely closed, I couldn't get it below 250. I also had some leaking around the hinges, so it was a productive test run
Here you can see where I doubled up the gasket tape since you can see the first layer wasn't enough, the smoke got through.

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

Next, I went to work sealing this thing up. I made a block off plate for the left vent

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

And I used some sealant tape to form a better seal around the other vent and it seals completely now

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

I also blocked off the drain hole, since most drippings will end up in the firebox

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

My second smoke, I was able to run it to 300, and then bring it back down to 200 no problem. On half a basket at 225, I was able to run for 4 hours without touching the smoker. The smoke stack leaves a lot to be desired, it can't close completely, so that will probably be my next project so I can kill the fire after a short smoke.

Here are some action shots

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

I tested it out by smoking some eggs at about 125-150 degrees, the difference in color is half an hour compared to an hour they turned out really good!

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

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• guitarman023
• Sep 25, 2019

I plan on disassembling the smoke stack at some point and building a new baffle that will close off completely, but that will require drilling all the rivets out, and might be simpler to build my own. Hopefully this helps the next person. I am pretty impressed with this smoker, and with the gasket material and all my mods, I'm in it for about 160 dollars. I am taking it camping next week, and will have more pictures soon. Thanks for reading!

 

[guitarman023]

I went on a camping trip and made quite a bit of food for friends and family, modifications to the smoker worked very well.
Cold smoked some more eggs to make spicy deviled eggs

Smoked salt with pecan and hickory, very good on eggs and corn on the cob

Sausage fatty with spicy italian sausage, pepperoni, mozzarella, banana peppers, and vidalia onion inside.

pulled pork so tender, I couldn't get it off the grate in one piece.

smoked mac and cheese with jalepenos and habanero peppers, with smoked sausage.

and my personal favorite, pork shots with kielbasa, mozzarella, and a little rub. Had a lot of fun cooking for everyone.

 

[guitarman023]

Did some more modding, made wheels for the smoker that only roll when the smoker is tilted, added a sheet of steel between the firebox and the cabinet to cut down on direct heat, and added grommets to the side for my temp probes.

 

[alreegator]

Very informative. I'm looking at buying one myself, and the "entry-level" units such as this has really piqued my interest as I am just as interested in the modification phase as the smoking phase. Nothing like enjoying it after making it my own.

 

[guitarman023]

Very informative. I'm looking at buying one myself, and the "entry-level" units such as this has really piqued my interest as I am just as interested in the modification phase as the smoking phase. Nothing like enjoying it after making it my own.

I am pretty impressed with this smoker after modifications. It's pretty hard to keep the temps down low before at least fixing the vents and door seals. Bare minimum mods should be fixing the vents and sealing the doors. Definitely a good starting point, but I wish the racks were a bit bigger. 13x14" is about the max on the cooking surface of each rack. Hard to argue with the price though. My biggest reason for going this direction, it's still small enough to be portable, and I had a red stone vertical smoker before this one which was a 3 piece unit. I regularly smoke whole pork shoulders which means I'm smoking for 20+ hours. Taking apart the 3 piece smoker to add fuel or make other adjustments was annoying to say the least when it was loaded up with four butts. Having a separate firebox is a must in my opinion for long smokes.

 

[jmtyndall]

I had a mod post going in the "builds" section for a while. I completely replaced the chimney and have had much better results. I too did the math and found that 2 inlets was just way too much free area for air intake. I think a WSM has like 5.5 square inches of inlet with all the vents open, and most people run 2 closed and 1 cracked. This grill had 4x that fully open and like 3 sq in fully closed down. So I added a pipe and capped the drain and made a block for the left side intake.

Right side intake is still a work in progress, I usually find that I can close it almost all the way then use the exhaust to keep temps down. Anyways, nice work. I'll be following.

Modding DynaGlo Vertical

Look, it's nothing compared to what you all have, but a couple years ago my wife bought me a DynaGlo 36" vertical smoker because I wanted to try out smoking some meats. A couple months later I discovered this website and discovered the offset models are more popular, but no reason to throw out...

www.smokingmeatforums.com

 

[fxsales1959]

nicepost. in same boat. first full"weekend" with exact same. did the door gaskets. personally think heat management is a paain in the #$%. already researching offsets on a budget. right now two butts in. keeping temp around 240 or below. think smoke management should be better. tried minion but chunks burnt up really fast. tried using basket with chips with ame results (soaked and unsoaked.)) looking at an gffordble offset like Oklahoma Joe highlander with mods. hoping will be less pain in the #$%.
since I'v got two junk Masetrbuilt elctrics rotting on the porch, budget will be an issue, which is why I opted for the dyna-glo. Got spoiled on heat management while the MES units worked. lred like the bark and ring better with charcoal. will probably post question in the approprite subject area on the Oklahoma or offsets in general. also looking atChar-griller 8125.
thanks for posting. sorry for bad typing (stroke survivor)

 

[jmtyndall]

nicepost. in same boat. first full"weekend" with exact same. did the door gaskets. personally think heat management is a paain in the #$%. already researching offsets on a budget. right now two butts in. keeping temp around 240 or below. think smoke management should be better. tried minion but chunks burnt up really fast. tried using basket with chips with ame results (soaked and unsoaked.)) looking at an gffordble offset like Oklahoma Joe highlander with mods. hoping will be less pain in the #$%.
since I'v got two junk Masetrbuilt elctrics rotting on the porch, budget will be an issue, which is why I opted for the dyna-glo. Got spoiled on heat management while the MES units worked. lred like the bark and ring better with charcoal. will probably post question in the approprite subject area on the Oklahoma or offsets in general. also looking atChar-griller 8125.
thanks for posting. sorry for bad typing (stroke survivor)

The easiest heat management I've found is to put only 5 or 6 lit coals into an basket of unlit. Wood under the coals or in the basket is fine. As the unit comes up to 170-180f I close down one inlet completely and the other most of the way. You may also have to close down the exhaust. Anyways, temp management is what started me on these mods, and it's much easier now. Having used this a few times, I start the exhaust halfway closed then adjust from there. Seems to work.

An offset stick burner is a LOT of work. Theres no set and forget for temp management on it. When I run the OK Joe, I'm out in the yard, drinking beer, managing the smoker full time. Probably every 15-30 minutes I'm adjusting a vent or adding a split. I think that's not the smoker for you. If you don't want to mod your DynaGlo I suggest a WSM or a pellet smoker. People have good luck dialing their WSM into a temperature and then having it stay there for many hours. That's basically where I'm trying to get with this. By the time I'm done modding it, I may have been better off just getting a WSM. Live and learn, I know tons more now than I did when I got the DynaGlo.

That said, about future mods on this smoker; I gave up trying to cut in the pinwheel damper I bought. Instead I'm going to order something like this: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/574076426/uds-ugly-drum-smoker-bbq-smoker-exhaust

After that, I think I'm going to take some measurements and make a heat-deflector plate to go over the charcoal and minimize direct heat.

Finally, I might look into making a larger expanded metal charcoal basket if I need longer burn times

 

[fxsales1959]

thanks for the input. I'd hate to spend $300 to learn more stuff that pisses me off. my two butts today were excrutiating. start with almost 3/4 chimney, and it seemed I was constantly messing either ith coals or wood They ended up ok.decent ring, nice bark, but not as smoky as I imagined they would be. I will re-read your mods. I gues the lower dmpers are next. I wish Mastrbuilt would fix their control units for the two electric ones I have. they were easy and made good flavor.

 

[jmtyndall]

thanks for the input. I'd hate to spend $300 to learn more stuff that pisses me off. my two butts today were excrutiating. start with almost 3/4 chimney, and it seemed I was constantly messing either ith coals or wood They ended up ok.decent ring, nice bark, but not as smoky as I imagined they would be. I will re-read your mods. I gues the lower dmpers are next. I wish Mastrbuilt would fix their control units for the two electric ones I have. they were easy and made good flavor.

I end up messing with my vertical every half hour or so usually. But the goal is to get it to the point that I set the vents and cruise for a couple hours without adjustments. It will never be as hands-off as a pellet grill or electric

 

[fxsales1959]

thank you again,
hate to be pain in tthe A$% newbie, but on those lower vent mods. did you put gsket tape on the vent itself or on th wall of th smoker? I've got a bit left over from my door sealing and want to have a go at it whiel I've got a little time.

 

[guitarman023]

I added the gasket tape to the vent holes itself. There is a little lip on the holes where they stamped the material out, clean the area with isopropyl alcohol and put your gasket tape on there. I used a flashlight to look for any leaks and adjusted the gasket tape accordingly. It works great, I can kill the fire completely and I've been able to smoke eggs and cheese and other low temp smokes using this mod. For smoking butts, I usually load the basket up, dump a half chimney of coals on top, get the smoker up to temp and play with the vent for about 15 mins before it will run on it's own for a few hours.

 

[hawtsauc3]

I always find mods cool, but I also always wonder why some of these companies don't just want to try to sell a better version in the first place. I mean i get it's always a balance of performance vs price but its' not like weber struggles to get ppl to commit to their pricing.

 

[fxsales1959]

I added the gasket tape to the vent holes itself. There is a little lip on the holes where they stamped the material out, clean the area with isopropyl alcohol and put your gasket tape on there. I used a flashlight to look for any leaks and adjusted the gasket tape accordingly. It works great, I can kill the fire completely and I've been able to smoke eggs and cheese and other low temp smokes using this mod. For smoking butts, I usually load the basket up, dump a half chimney of coals on top, get the smoker up to temp and play with the vent for about 15 mins before it will run on it's own for a few hours.

thank you