Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) 22 Mods Complete!

hey folks welcome back to the q shed backyard barbecue today we're going to take a look at all the modifications that i've done to my 22 inch weber smoky mountain cooker i finally got it where i want it and we'll walk through all the various mods and show you what i've done thanks again for joining us so i'll put links to all these items down in the description below but the first thing is this cover that i got from amazon it's not made for the weber smoky mountain but it fits it perfectly especially after i've installed handles and shelf and the lid hinge and all these things we'll look at in just a minute okay so starting down at the bottom is maybe my favorite modification this is a 28 inch wide quarter inch thick aluminum disc that i used for the base for the weber smoky mountain the wsm comes standard with these three aluminum legs and they're not especially flimsy but the problem is you cannot move the cooker if you need to or when you need to because inevitably you will sorry for the geese flying overhead apparently they don't know it's early february they're not supposed to be coming back yet anyway um so what i did knowing that i would want to move it across this fairly rough concrete is bolted the three aluminum legs to this super sturdy aluminum disc and then mounted four casters on the disc two of the casters are locking two or not they all four swivel and it makes it really really easy to move around moving up from there we've got these cool touch handles which i've mounted to all three of the bottom dampers as well as the top lid damper okay makes it much easier to adjust them when they're hot and they do get very hot during the cook all right next on our way up the cooker we have this beautiful cajun bandit stainless steel door with their upgraded latch okay i think this may be primarily for looks but it does look great the stock door seemed to work fine it's actually easier to bend to avoid smoke leakage this one is much thicker much more difficult to bend so we'll see how it works in terms of smoke leakage but it does look good next moving around is this side shelf also by cajun bandit [Music] the shelf is going to come in really handy to use for things like my temperature controller spritzes and so forth i don't know what the weight capacity is i'm not sure i'd want to throw 20 pounds of meat on it but i'm sure it could probably handle it folds down nice and easy by pulling it out next i have these handles that i put on both sides they are handles for a garage door they cost all of about six dollars for the pair makes it much much easier to move that center section when the time comes otherwise you're just grabbing it by the rim of that barrel moving up top i installed this telltrue thermometer in place of the factory thermometer this did require drilling a 7 8 inch hole which amounts to opening up the hole for the factory thermometer it's not that big a deal at all i used a step bit for instructions and it worked out just fine it'll be much more accurate than the factory thermometer for sure this one is a three inch dial with a two and a half inch stem moving around to the other side of the dome here we have the top vent with the cool touch handle installed as you can see you just have to drill one hole through there quarter inch hole and put the nut on the back side easy i also drilled out the rivet that normally holds the dome lid damper in place and in its place put a quarter inch bolt with a wing nut on the back side that'll make it removable so that it can be cleaned underneath and more easily replaced [Music] probably the best modification that i did which i'll show you in action here in just a second is this lid hinge also from cajun bandit the brand is unknown barbecue but this thing is a game changer as so many others have said okay so now i'm going to get it opened up and show you a few things i've done inside the cooker but first i wanted to show you why this lid hinge is such a game changer usually with the wsm during a cook you have to pull the dome lid off you need somewhere to put it and that's usually on the ground for me which means you have to have something laid out so you don't scratch the bottom side of it and it's kind of a pain now that it can't be overcome but if there's a better way to do it it makes sense right there's a better way to do it and this lid hinge is it pretty easy to install you have to drill a total of six holes four in the cylinder two up here in the dome lid it's not that big a deal you take your time you use several different sizes of bits progressively larger if i can do it literally anyone can do it so it goes from trying to find a place to put your dome lid to this it's super sturdy and again for me it really is a game changer i am so glad i bit the bullet and installed this hinge to lower it you just pull it up about a quarter of an inch and set the lid down on the cooker to remove it pull this pin make sure you don't lose it and pull the lid off as you normally would now let's take a look inside the cooker starting down at the bottom this is one of my favorite things which is a beast basket it's a huge charcoal basket made by my buddy greg at the woodshed barbecue please check his channel out if you haven't already i'll put a link in the description below for him he is a master metal worker right now he is not doing any work he hasn't been feeling well so thoughts and prayers to buddy greg but this thing will hold almost 40 pounds of charcoal so you could do the longest cook i mean he's he's gotten 40 hours of burn time out of the thing which there's nothing is going to take that long obviously but the longest brisket cook the longest pork butt cook no problem on the 22 wsm or the 18 for that matter with his baskets so it is heavy duty metal basket it's got handles welded on to it and i have installed a second grate down in the bottom running the opposite direction so that it'll keep smaller pieces of charcoal from dropping through until they're in fact nearly fully burned up so it ends up being a very solid self-contained unit he put tabs on the bottom of his basket so it holds the grates in place when you're finished with the cook the next day you can shake out the ash rake it around and reuse any unburnt coals it just sits down on the bottom just like the stock charcoal basket that's a super good mod so now let's talk a little bit about some of the mods i've done inside of the cooker as you can see in place of the standard water pan that comes with weber smoky mountain i have a solid piece of steel this is a 19 inch by quarter inch thick piece of steel and i use it it's another idea by the way i got from my buddy greg at the woodshed but i use it as a diverter plate a lot of people that run the stock water pan don't put water in it they might put sand or they might put nothing many of them just wrap it in foil and use as a drip pan so what i do is use this quarter inch thick steel as a diverter plate to spread out the heat evenly it seems to work great and on top of the steel i use this 19 inch pizza plate for a drip pan so i really like this setup one of the reasons is the weber water pan is pretty deep and it gets down near the coals and especially using greg's beast basket it really doesn't work that well because the bottom of the pan is too near the coals so i like this setup a lot it gets a diverter much higher up off of the coals the only downside is it brings the diverter plate and the drip pan right up near that bottom rack where it would normally go in fact the bottom rack would sit right on top of the pizza pan so i wanted to find a way around that what i came up with is using the top rack instead of the standard bottom rack that comes with the wsm which would sit on these brackets here and i found that the top rack actually sits on these mounting nuts for the rack supports just like that now it's raised about an inch and a half up off of the diverter plate and pizza pan drip pan and works much better for cooking meat on this bottom rack i just ordered a second top grate from amazon so now i have a little more cooking space and it works perfectly for two rack cooking with my quarter inch steel diverter plate in place i really like how it's set up now i think it's much more usable and i look forward to doing lots of cooks on it for you i will say that with any of the drilling you're going to have to be doing and again there were a total of four holes for these handles no holes need to be drilled for the shelf you do have to drill again the six holes in the back of the cooker for the lid hinge and then of course just down through the bottom of the feet for the base or for any other caster arrangements you might install when you're drilling through the porcelain enamel finish of either the dome lid or the midsection i would recommend that you take your time in doing so start with a small bit and work your way up maybe four to six different size bits it'll pay dividends you will chip and crack the porcelain enamel less also i would say after you drill the holes to clean the area with some acetone let it dry well and then hit it with a little bit of touch-up paint i used stove paint high temp stove paint and if you get some overspray on the outside and you want to clean that up the acetone is great for that as well just try to catch it pretty quickly after you do it so that's it those are all the mods i've done to my weber smoky mountain 22. let me know in the comments below if you have some other ideas if you don't like some of the things i've done if you do i'm a big boy i can take it thanks again for joining us in the q shed today take care

Channel: The Q Shed Backyard BBQ

Views: 51,458

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Id: 7XYt4c9Z9fc

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021