OK Joe’s combo mods

[Tommyd524]

Hey guys, I am fairly new to the world of smoking meat and recently got a Oklahoma Joe’s 3 in 1 combo smoker/grill. During my first trial run controlling the temp I struggled quite a bit. I have been learning of the different mods people do to their offsets and since have added gaskets and tuning plates which has made a huge difference. On this particular smoker there is a hole at the bottom of the smoke chamber joining the gas side of the grill. My question is, should this hole be plugged? To me, it seems this would let a lot of air in since there are vents on the gas side of the grill. I haven’t seen any threads that touched on this. I have thought about stuffing it with fire blanket to plug the hole but I am not sure if it is there for a reason that I'm not seeing. If anyone has any experience with this grill and what they’ve done with this hole, if anything, please share.

 

[tddeangelo]

Watching this one...just setup the same rig (OK Joe 3-in-1) yesterday, seasoned it, and did some burgers and dogs on it.

I'm thinking I'm gonna break it in as a smoker with a batch of PA Dutch Sweet Bologna. I've made that in my MES before, so I want to run something I've made before so I'm not learning the food item as well as my smoker.

What I've found so far on mods is:

-Seal/gaskets for doors, including vent/cleanout door on the smoker.
-High temp caulk for barrel seams, seam around the stack, etc.
-lower stack to the grate level
-Elbow on the stack
-basket or some other mod to raise/better ventilate the charcoal rack on both the grill/cook chamber side and the firebox side.
-A lot of recommendations for a BBQ Guru fan to give more precise temp control. This one is a little on the pricey side, so it'll probably have to wait a bit for me.

I know folks also seem to add multiple thermos to get temps down near the grate.

Somewhere on one of the threads I've read (too many to keep track of!), a member here mentioned he uses the side burner to light his chimney starter, which seems like an interesting idea.

My intended first mods are going to be the caulk to seal the seams, high temp silicone or oven door gasket to help seal the doors. Cooking in the grill with charcoal showed fairly steady temps (if the thermo that comes with it cam be believed), but I could definitely see the leakage when the charcoal was smokey.

Definitely post as you make mods. I'll be working on it right along with ya.