Over the past week I'm sure everyone has seen my complaints with my newly purchased 1600, and design flaws that never should have made it past prototyping let alone into the models actually for sale.

In my hunt to make it not a waste of $1000, I found the old forum posts and the guys linking to smoke daddy and smoke like a boss for iOS and "upgrades".

$40 for a 12x2.125 piece of stainless for the air gap mod, $40 for the "flame tamer", $500 for a new controller, and still nobody fixing what I see as bigger problems related to temperature control and heating. Well no, I just spent a grand on this smoker, I have tools, not wasting anymore money.

So I took a good hard look at my pellet grill that has just worked for the past 6 years, but isn't big enough for my needs anymore. I then made a few phone calls, and acquired quite the pile of stainless sheet ranging from 8-16 gauge.

I still have a lot of cardboard prototyping to do, but the plan is to replace the bottom "cover" with one that will already cover the fire pit because that sear gimmick is just that, a gimmick, and does far more harm than good. Then replace the "drip tray" piece under the cooking grates with a flat, rectangular piece that is bent to solve the air gap problem, and also wide enough that grease won't drip down the edges and catch on freaking fire on longer cooks, like the rounded POS it came with allowed to happen.

Those parts I can do no problem. They should be HUGE helps in evening out temperate side to side. What's going to be trickier is moving the temp probe and the chimney.

The chimney is too high for proper airflow, it should be even with the bottom grate, not the top. And the temp probe directly against the hopper side wall is just a terrible place for it. Without buying a new controller, I'm not sure how to pull that off yet, but I'm very open to suggestion.

So anyone done these changes themselves and have any tips before I begin a lengthy trial and error process to fix what should have never left the factory?