Help maintaining temp in Brinkmann Trailmaster Limited

[flrebel]

Hey yall, I recently bought a Brinkmann TMLE and made a charcoal basket for it, as well as welded the seams of the firebox, and a few seams on the ash pan, to try and seal the firebox up good. I filled my charcoal basket woth unlit briquettes 1/3 to the top, and left a open space at the left corner farthest from the intake damper to dump 1/3 chimney of hot briquettes. I tried this before I welded the firebox, and most of the briquettes were burning (from the bottom up) after 10 minutes. Today, after the welding, I tried again, and again most of the briquettes were burning from the bottom up but it took around 20 minutes for this to happen as opposed to 10. What am I doing wrong? Does everyone else use briquettes, or do yall use lump charcoal or just straight wood? I've read a few reviews on here saying the TMLE is more of a stick burner, and I am ok with that but would like to have the ability to keep stable temps for a few hours at a time. I have never had a smoker that I used only wood in, so if that is the case, how do I go about it for consistent temps? Thanks!!

Note: with the ash pan closed, and before all the charcoal cuaght fire, it was responding real good to damper adjustments, stack was wide open. After all the coals caught, I had little control left.

 

[daveomak]

FLR, morning and welcome to the forum....  If you have the damper closed and the smoker is still to hot, there are air leaks.....   Seal them up and you will be good to go....    Dave

 

[uc smoker]

I'm not familiar with your smoker, but in general, lump starts faster, burns with less ash and food tastes better. Perhaps it doesn't burn as long but I get 12+ hours out of a std load (stock Weber fire ring) on my 18.5 WSM.

 

[flrebel]

Well, I thought there might be air leaks too, but when I only have a few briquettes burning, the smoker responds well to intake damper adjustments. I can increase, maintain, or decrease temperature easily, as measured at grate level with a wired-remote digital thermo probe. It's only when more and more briquettes start burning that I lose the ability to control heat.

If I did have air leaks, I'd think they are from around the ash drawer. I did what I could as far as welding on it, and there is a good seal between the drawer frame and firebox. I also welded the firebox halves together on 2 sides (the other 2 sides are true to each other with no gaps) and seal the gaps around the movable part of the ash drawer with aluminum foil before firing up for the day.

I do have small wisps of smoke from both lids (firebox and pit), could these be significant enough to cause this? I wasn't sure it would affect it since they are above the flame whereas the ash drawer is below it.

I got to thinking last night, maybe it's the way I'm burning the charcoal, as well as still having some air leaks. Yesterday I did some country ribs, and tried something different. I covered just the bottom of my charcoal basket with a layer of unlit briquettes, and put 8 fully lit ones on top of the unlit, as far to the left as I could (left side is farthest from the intake damper), yet after 20 minutes of this, half the charcoal was burning and temp was climbing again. Seems that no matter how full of a charcoal basket I start with, the bottom-most layer seems to light off which of course gets the stuff above it going right quick.

Dave, I've given lump charcoal a try and had the same results BUT that was before I did any modifications to the smoker. I'll give it another try!

I think what I'll do is connect a shop-vac to my stack and pull a small draft thru the smoker, while moving a smoldering piece of wood around to see where smoke gets drawn in. That should help out a lot.