Ok, so I already had 2 of these suckers I bought over 2 years ago. I use them mainly for cold smoking my home cured bellies and every other month or so I hot smoke canadian bacon. I like the 40" models as the cooking grates can hold a full belly. So I've been doing so many bellies at once I decided to add another MES to the table to get them done faster. Since I only wanted the cabinet, I didn't care if the cooking part worked or not. I didn't want to buy someone else's smoker so I started looking on ebay for a returned or broken, as new smoker. I found several "parts only" smokers, several from VM Innovations. I've purchased other stuff from their online store before, and they've always had good prices. The item contained everything, cooking grates, wheels, etc. So, at 140$ including shipping I popped out for it. It came in three days via FEDEX, arriving yesterday. The exterior boxing was a little worse for wear, but when I opened it up I found that it contained original shipping material and looked as if it had never been removed from the box. Everything was there, including the digital control that is mounted on top of the smoker. Never used, or plugged in as far as I could tell. After setting it up, and making sure all the styrofoam packing was removed, I decided to plug it in and see if it would work. Powered it on, set the temp and time and the unit came on and began heating. Wonder of wonders, everything worked as it should, even the interior light that will eventually get smoked over. I pulled up a chair and watched it get up to 250 degrees and was checking it against my SMOKE thermometer. It held within 5 degrees which is fine with me. I'll be doing some more testing, actually cooking something, but it appears I got a fully functional 40" MES for less than 150 bucks.
