# Wood Chip Retro-Kit 2010 upgrade for the 1st Generation SS MES 40.



## bsimages (Feb 2, 2013)

I received my smoker in January and am quite pleased with her but the smoke was on the light side, plus it only turned the wood chips into charcoal, not white ash as I had expected.

I called Masterbuilt last week and the gal was very polite and helpful.

I told her that the smoke was lighter than expected, she registered my MES and arranged to ship out the retro-fix.
Nine days later my upgrade came via UPS with extremely simple and easy directions.
It contained two screws one bolt with nut and lock washer.

A Wood Chip Housing unit and a Wood Chip Tray.

The two big differences are that the chip tray is twice as big and wood chip housing does not have the extra flap of metal between the heating element and the chip tray thus making the larger chip tray much hotter!

I re-did the burn-in as per the directions and when I added the chips during the last hour...the difference was easy to see.

At least twice the smoke!

I also check the accuracy of the temp gauge and it was right on the money, the meat probe was too!








  I just came in from checking the wood chip (ash) tray and it's full of white ash!  
	

	
	
		
		



		
		
	


	





!













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  Side by side view.













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  The old. Notice the wasteful un-burnt wood chips...













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  The new.













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  Note the lack of a metal shield between the heating element and the wood chip tray.













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  The smoke (the temp gauge is three inches from the door and is that blur hanging from the top shelf).













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  The ash!  The black part was still burning.













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  And the simple directions...

A tip of my hat to Masterbuilt on a great face save!!!


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## bsimages (Feb 3, 2013)

I guess that I will have to wait until Tuesday to give it a real test, because Tuesdays are my Saturdays.

I hope that this post will be helpful to someone out there in SMF, because if it weren't for this forum I wouldn't have known about this simple and painless fix!

No Superbowl for me...


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## bsimages (Feb 6, 2013)

18 lbs. of pork shoulder the retro-kit did the trick!

I smoked them with apple and cherry wood chips, most excellent pulled pork!

26 hours of low and slow smoking did 'em right!!













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  Bones and skin, happy dogs!


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## dave from mesa (Feb 12, 2013)

BS

Thanks for the post. I called Masterbuilt today and got a new tray also.

Pork looks great. 26 hrs??? What temp did you smoke that at?


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## bsimages (Feb 12, 2013)

Thank you, it was actually done after 22 hours at 225, I lowered the temperature to 190 for fours to keep it hot before serving.

 I guess I used the MES as a holding oven for the last part...


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## unclejoeyv (Mar 18, 2013)

Glad to find this post. I just received my MES40 1st generation smoker and I was unsure if mine would need the chip tray upgrade. Yours was the first post I found with the side-by-side comparison pics so it is not clear to me that I have the old style chip tray and I will be calling masterbuilt this evening to get the larger chip tray.

Thanks!


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