Got a little more work done on the fridge with the firebox cutout finished & sealed, chimney installed etc., and I gave the sheet metal shop a call as I should have been able to pick up my material by now. The guy says well I applogize but I forgot.
FORGOT? Man I got to get my freak on, YOU FORGOT? lol
Anyhow I figue, this rocks gotta roll so I pulled out the old rubber seal from the scrap box and figured I'd use that for test purposes. I fired up a small pile of coals and got up to a respectable 130* and held that for a while. The temp held nice and steady responding quickly to the outer damper as it should.
all went well so I figured lets ramp it up a bit and on went more coals.
up goes the temp to 240* and then up further to 270* and continued to climb to near 300*. Being happy with how high the temps were I let things settle back down and added a second probe monitoring the temp ranges to 230*.
I found a top temp of around 230* to 240* at the top rack hieght while the bottom rack registered a temp at 194*, with a 46* difference between the two areas. However, at lower temps, say 130ish, the temp difference is much less with the balancing range at about 110* with a 7 to 10 degree difference.
I still need to have my baffle fabbed and installed but I doubt this will change things too much. To achieve a more even temp I think I may need a larger stack diameter. One consulation was that at the lower temps the overall temp difference was less. At higher temps I believe the greater overall temp difference was because the 4" stack just cant dump the heat fast enough. While this doesn't necessarily mean that the I need a 6" stack (yet), it's certainly something to consider. I think if I change the chimney and go to a 6" stack with a chimney damper and it'll be strokin.
I'll run it for a longer duration once I get the door skinned and trim/seal completed and a baffle installed and see what we see then.
Overall I'm happy with the way it ran at it's lower temps with a good response to the damper and a nice steady 170ish roll with no fluctuation. Next I'll see what the lowest manageable temp I can achieve and see how that holds. I'm looking forward to cooking some dead animals in this thing real soon.