Hemi and tbird , There is a lid that raises up and you can grill on the expanded metal there , but you loose a lot of your heat to the smoker if you open that lid,To alleviate that problem I was thinking of a Baffel of some kind to divert most of the heat and smoke , but have enough to do your grilling.(Pipe dream). I guess I mean you need a seperate unit, so why not? We all have more than 1. Looks impressive when you have 3or4 cookers out and manning each as the neighbors watch?
My doors and lid are pretty well sealed,more would be fine,but I have no trouble with the way it is,I have a great variance of heat too , I have baffeled and plated the smoke chamber. I closeed off the area from the FB to the Barrel with a 1/4" plate at 45* and several plates with different widths,along the barrel with a 5or6 " space between the cooking grate and the plates(4" is good,I just had room).Here is a shot of the plates:
The one on the extreme right is the bottom of the Baffel plate at 45 degrees to the others. This lets me hold a temp. real even across the grate(except for my obligtory hot spot at the FB side-about 5-6").
What I have is a Tejas 2040CC :
The only other mods I've done to her is some fire brick in the FB and down the inside of the belly to the vert. area for ballast(heat retention).
I do have another Little Girl I like to play with , a Brinkman Red River model SFB model I have modded to a reverse flow using a Stainless steel plate and a funnel.
She's about 20 yrs. old and notice The exhaust on the FB side. She's a little ruff, but still delivers the good stuff.
Have fun and .................
Stan aka oldschoolbbq
