Before you send your comment please understand that I am well aware that the smoke leaks are not a defect in this grill. I sealed it because thats my preference, it is not required to successfully cook on this grill. Thanks for watching!
You have a serious case of OCD. My brother and i have these same pellet smokers. We are full time rv’ers and we use these grills alot. We haven’t put any new gasket tape or anything like that on ours. Everything we have done has come out great. We have done ribs, brisket, pork butt, turkey, chicken, i can’t remember what else without a hitch. I will agree with you on one point, those fold up legs are a pain in the ass. But when you move around like we do you have to use them to carry the grill to the table. Which is not easy when your 71 years old. My brother is 74.
Glad you guys are enjoying this grill....it's awesome!! Sealing it up is definitely not a requirement and it does crank out some great food without it. I however cannot leave anything the way I got it. It may be a medical condition Haha. Grill on guys and be safe out there.
I know this video is old but thanks for sharing. I just bought one and have the same issues with it. So I just orders the gasket and latches. Thanks man. Happy cooking
I have had my grill for a year of course I use a lot of other barbecue grills and smokers. The one thing I would never do is take the legs off this grill because you lose the portability it’s very difficult to carry. I use ours in our 37 foot motorhome and it is set up cooking outside my house right now. I don’t know but I am considering doing your modifications with the gasket I would do a little gasket splitting to make it work out right. Might be just as easy to wait the handle that install a latch.
I just did mine. Double Gasket on the door and stack. Double latches. And my seams were leaking. Sealed the seams with high temp bbq rtv sealer. Zero leakage now. Thanks for the great video.
I bought mine because of it being 12 volt and something I can use off a car battery during power outages. The legs are an awful design. Mine leaks too, but I do not worry about it. My biggest issue are hotspots which is hard to work around with such a small surface area. I had not used mine for a couple of years. I even left pellets in it. I fired it up this week and it works just like it did when new.
I can't remember the brand of gasket I purchased from Amazon, but I was able to carefully split pull apart the thickness of it. The top and bottom of door are different heights and that is where your smoke is coming from. Splitting the gasket in half and adding an additional half to the top and bottom of door sealed it up perfectly. I also had to add one set of thin washers to the hinge to lift it very slightly so it can form to the grill and added gasket properly. I get absolutely zero smoke leaking and 100% out of the stack. Also made use of those stupid legs to make a useful carry handle. I also suggest instead of a sheet of heat drawing metal under the grill. Try using a large flooring porcelain tile from home depot to dissipate the heat. 👍😃. I took photos of my mods but I don't think I can upload them here?
Thank you Jason!! Those are great tips. Glad you got your DC sealed up. Because I primarily use mine for camping I went with a .5" sheet of plywood that I set the cooker on, it works perfect and is nice and light, best of all....I don't have to worry about breaking it. Love the idea of a tile though if it were to stay on the patio. Thank you for supporting the channel 👊 Feel free to DM those pics to my Instagram @cook.outside I would love to see what you've done.
Do the temps hold more steady or the same prior to mods? Also did this slow the cunsumption of pellets? How long now has the gasket been on and is it holding up with latch? Thanks in advance.
Can't be sure if it holds temp or if pellet usage is any better, I did all this after my first or second cook so I wasn't real familiar with it in stock form. Gasket/latch have been on since June and still going strong. In my pork shoulder video I ran it for 10hrs on right around one hopper full. Sorry this doesn't help too much. Thanks for watching!
@@cookoutside644 awesome, thanks for vidieos and thoughts. They all helped me make my decision. You still like it and how often you use vs how long you use it?
I really like the grill, it's not my main cooker but is convenient and has been reliable for us. For a camping grill it's awesome and I would buy it again.
cool ideas, i've run mine for about a year and a half no mods, i guess it could matter slightly with smoke "leak" (it leaks pretty good out the chimney lol), today i think i melted/broke the combustion fan , (why i was looking at the videos)...gonna try to replace/repair. I would warn that its a good idea to keep on top of cleaning, i didnt and i think the grease buildup led to the fan issue....so far i'm pretty pleased with the DC. Thanks for the video
Thanks for watching Greg, glad you like the cooker! GMG recommends cleaning after every full bag of pellets but I've noticed that it has trouble igniting if I don't clean it out every few cooks.
great video, thanks for the MOD info too. i dont mind the legs as i use it on my patio and there it stays. it is dripping goo on the side now, from the smoke stack, and small drips in the front too... i've had it for about 2 weeks, but have cooked a shit ton of meats already, baby back ribs, tri tip, pork butt, bacon wrapped scallops, chicken wings, chicken thighs all turned out great, not sure if i wanna take the time to seal it up tho, it held its temps great......but i do need to clean the front lid, what did you use??
Thanks for watching! Glad you like the grill. I use a product called Citrusafe, it's a cooking safe degreaser from Lowe's in my area. I've also had good luck in the past using Easy off BBQ cleaner on my Weber kettles.
I did the gasket and latch on mine! 👍 but the 200+ deg temperature spikes and the inability to connect to my wifi has made mine a total disaster.... thanks for the idea though.
Just got a DC this weekend and cooked ribs as well, they turned out fantastic. My only concern so far is how loud the auger motor is in this thing (2020 WiFi model) and if that will be super distracting at the campground? Does the auger motor get quiter after a break-in period? I hope so! Thanks
I did the whole lid but the back half is what made me do the latch, since the gasket material made the back section touch sooner the front was more open, latch solved that. Thanks for watching.
I was looking at buying one of these and removing the legs as well. Do you still hang it off the edge of the table and use the regular bucket or something else? Thanks!
I say do it! It's a great little grill. I do use it on the right edge of a table so the bucket hangs off. I probably won't make a permanent table for it because it will go from the patio to the camper in my case. Thanks for watching!
@@cookoutside644 I have never used the bucket to catch grease. I use an empty tin can with a wire handle made from a coat hanger. Soda cans work well too if you can cut the top off..... easy to dispose of.
Yeah, you may be a little anal about the smoke leaking. I have a Big Green Egg, and it leaks some too. I just ordered one of these to take camping in my RV. I had to search high and low to find one with the handles, since they replaced this with the Trek model this year. I don't want one of those, it looks harder to carry for a 66 year old guy like me. I wanted the tote bag too that's only available with this model. That gasket material naturally forms with the heat from cooking, so you probably didn't need the latch, but that's a good Idea, especially for moving it around. I get mine on Wednesday, can't wait to get smoking when camping! Thanks for the videos.
Vacuum out the inside, make sure to get the firepot clean. Wipe out any excess grease if you want and I wipe the temp probe clean also. Use degreaser at your own risk as you could ruin the flavor of your food. If you must use cleaners I would do a thorough burnout before cooking.
It's not just that it leaks smoke (and therefore heat), but the leaking smoke turns to drippy oozy messy stuff running down from the leaky spots. Especially at the chimney.
It's not bad but I don't carry it far. I use the built in handle on the side of the hopper box and hold it under the smoke stack on the other side to carry. Thanks for watching!
