And so it begins...

The Chargriller Smokin Pro. After using this setup for a week straight last year on vacation, I was sold on picking one up for my home use. It's a pretty versatile piece of equipment and you really can't beat it for the price. Much research and advice later, I bought one last night and set about assembly and figuring out what modifications I wanted to do off the bat. It's much easier to do whatever mods you want while the box is clean and free of the months/years of use that inevitably build up from smoking/grilling. I've documented the mods I've done as the step by steps I've found online have been pretty lacking. I mainly followed the chargrillermods PDF that's been floating around thesmokering and smokingmeatsforums. If you want the PDF, I can email it to you.

Here's the smoker after assembly. I didn't install the front shelf as the two wood(doubt it's wood) planks were split where an overzealous installer assembled them too tightly. I have a couple pieces of thick scrap that I'll be using in place of those.



So if you've never used a smoker or side fire box equipped barrel, there's always the issue of varying temperatures across the grates. Ideally, the temp will remain constant and true throughout the unit but with a lot of non-commercial setups, that's hard to maintain. Basically, the temperature is always hotter at the firebox end or end closest to the fuel/fire and that sucks if you're trying to stoke a long, drawn out smoke or if you have a lot of meat on the grates. Nothing like seeing some racks ready to go and calling "Chow Time", only to find the racks on the cool end just not quite there. People waiting around on you, not fun.

So the following few mods are an attempt to control and distribute temperatures across the smokin pro. What I want to do is keep the temp range the same from the end by the firebox to the other. To do this, I need to direct the heat and smoke further down the barrel before it rises and dissipates. The smokin pro comes with a lot of pieces to use it as both a grill and a smoker. To accomodate the grillers, they provide a coal grate that sits in the belly of the barrel and can be adjusted to different levels much like the standard charcoal grill with the grate you can raise and lower towards the flame/heat. I don't really plan on using it, like ever. Instead I did the following.

Bare Belly of the Pro



I grabbed a long piece of steel stock, 1 1/4" wide by 1/8" thick. Cut it into 22.5" sections and measured out the bolts holding the belly to the legs. Center to center, they are 15" apart. Attach the rail stock over top of the existing nuts and then tighten your own nuts down.

First Rail



Both bolted down





Now I've gotta mount a baffle at the mouth of the firebox. I got a couple sheets of metal and a piano hinge and went to town. Using cardboard, I trimmed and traced and trimmed and traced until I got a piece that would hug the barrel by the rails and still be able to swing up when I need access to the box from the barrel side. Mount the hinge to the baffle first and then line up where you want to mount it to the barrel. I went a couple inches above the top firebox mount bolt. Lastly, I cut a couple tuning plates from the remaining sheet metal. 2 - 6inch pieces and a 4 1/2inch piece. We'll see how well they work after the first few smokes.

Here's the baffle I trimmed down


Here's where it should mount.






From up top once mounted



And the view of how the smoke will flow through.




Finally, the tuning plates.






Next up, I extended the chimney vent down to the grate level using a piece of dryer vent. The stock chimney vent is located about a foot above the grates and allows for a lot of smoke and heat to blow by the meat too quickly. By extending the chimney venting down to the grates, you're prolonging smoke and heat in the chamber and making for a better, more sustained smoke.



Finally, I added two grate level temp gauges. The gauge that's supplied with the smokin pro has been dismissed as complete junk and I wanted to be able to monitor both ends of the chamber. I grabbed two char-broil gauges and drilled out two mounting holes on each end and as close to the grate as I could manage.

Here're some end product photos.