First impression of new MES40

[mojoman58]

I picked up one of the new 2012 MES40's at Bass Pro Shop yesterday. My first impression wasn't good as I was assembling the unit. The first step in the manual is to attach the rails on the bottom for the grease tray. I looked through all the parts and didn't have them. After looking some more I finally noticed they were already attached to the unit. First thought was I bought a returned one. Nothing looked like it had been opened though. I checked the screws to make sure they were tight and 1 screw on each rail was stripped and couldn't be tightened! I had to go buy slightly larger screws to secure the rails. On the front feet there are 6 screws to attach, both feet had 1 screw that wouldn't even line up to use. I'm hoping that 5 are good enough. The two plastic bottom side rails weren't much better. One of them had all four holes that are pre-drilled on the unit itself drilled at least twice the size of the screw! Another trip to the hardware store for over-sized screws. The other side attached fine. When I came to the step to add the door handle I found this was already installed at the factory. Everything else went fine.

 After finally assembling the unit I was not very impressed with the quality of manufacture. I would rate the it poorly so far.

 I have the unit pre-seasoning right now and at least the most important part of the unit seems to work great. It reached the set temp of 275* in 35 minutes. It didn't hurt that it's 85* outside. It's been going for about an hour & 15 minutes and it's fluctuating from 261*-283*. There was no smoke leaks that I could see when it smoked a lot on initial startup. I'll check again when I add chips the final 45 minutes.

 I've ordered the AMNPS and some pellets along with a Maverick ET732. Once I get them in I'll be ready to start smoking.

 

[mojoman58]

Well after running the MES40 through the pre-seasoning routine I'm feeling a little better about the unit. It heated up to full temp very fast (35 min) and held the temp fairly well (about 261-280 swing). Once I put in some wood chips with 45 minutes left I was very impressed. It started smoking less than 3 minutes after I dumped in the chips. And man did this thing smoke! Lots of smoke for the full 45 minutes and even continued for 15 minutes after it had shut down. I saw absolutely no leakage of smoke anywhere on the unit. After being off for 2 hours it was still registering 105* on the panel! This unit is very well insulated. I'll be trying a smoke very soon & I'll post after that.