choosing my next mod

[DocZ]

So it's been a few years since I added the 35cfm fan as used by many on this forum, and still feel the heater is underpowered for larger loads, and the temp control lags a ton. I just got 2 new 500 watt elements to kick things up and I'm getting ready to pull the back off my DBS6 but have two questions to throw out to the pro's on this forum.
1) choice of PID. Do I go with the plug and play Auber WS-1200CPH (Tempting), or one of the BBQ Guru units(if so, which one)?
2) Related question is about air flow. Is my fan mod  adequate with the added heater, or do I have to make a change or addition to the circulation?
BTW, Recently, I ducted air from a 12" room fan thru the biscuit/controller unit to improve air flow thru the box. This seemed to help, but I wonder if others have done this or have reasons to avoid this approach?

[Salmonsmoker]

35 cfm should be plenty. That's roughly 6 air changes per minute.

[TedEbear]

It sounds like the cfm you have is fine.  You don't want a tornado inside the Bradley.  Too much airflow would dry out the meat and blow the smoke right out the vent.

[SamuelG]

Any pictures to see the duct setup?

Thanks


SamuelG

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DocZ]

picture ghetto lol.   we're talking makeshift  here. Just heavy-duty foil shroud funneling air to vents on bisquit feeder assy.

[Habanero Smoker]

When I purchased my Raptor/Guru; Auber was not making plug and play PIDS at the time. I seems they only started making the plug and plays after The BBQ Guru had such a great success selling their electric controller, and after many members ordered parts from Auber to make their own PID controllers.

If Auber came out with theirs first, for an electric smoker, I would have went with the Auber dual probe. It has more features and the cost is less then any Raptor/Guru package. Having said that, if you have a charcoal or wood burner, and you have the Raptor/Guru package, you only need to purchase the blower fan and adapter to control you charcoal burner.  But you can't control both at the same time.

I use my package to either control the Bradley or my charcoal burner.The DigiQ should be all you need. The CyberQ II can control two pits, but you are looking at a much bigger expense, and I'm not sure if it could control a charcoal pit, and an electric smoker at the same time.

[DocZ]

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll probably go with the Auber, but can you tell me what advantage I get with the dual probe model that I don't already get with my Maverick ET-732?

[Habanero Smoker]

I don't have a PID, but from the description the two probes can work together. As the internal meat rises, you can program the PID to adjust the cabinet temperature. The probes read temperatures faster and are more accurate.

The Maverick will only monitor the cabinet temperature, and the internal meat temperature. It can not control the cabinet temperature, nor do the probes work with each other. Also the readout is slower. One plus, is that it is a remote thermometer, so you can monitor the temperatures from a remote site.

[DocZ]

So, finally done with my heater, fan and Auber PID mods. FWIW, I wanted to offer a couple of "heads'-up" for others to consider. Pic's of the heater and fan/stack mods follow. First, regarding the 2x500w heater mod: I used only 2 feet of high temp wire per lead and had plenty of slack to tuck away. the 2 female spades did not have to be hi-temp, but needed to be 10-12 gauge to recieve the leads from both elements. Obviously, the 14 gauge ring connectors for the element posts have to be hi-temp. I found fitting the element into the reflector was almost impossible, and required a lot of bending/twisting to get done--would like to hear of a workaround here (maybe oblique cuts from the edge to the 9/16" drilled hole would allow one to bend the side back, then returned to hold the element in position). Lastly, I found the the two new elements glowed identically, until I turned the fan on, then a slight difference was apparent. I described the fan/stack mod elsewhere on the forum (http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=27150.msg325330#msg325330), but you can see it in these pic's.

[TedEbear]

Looks good.  You must have added a switch to the second element if you needed 2 ft of wire.  I only needed 3-4 inches of high temp wire to make a short loop between the end of the first and second elements.  I don't feel a switch is necessary.

I didn't recall any difficulty in inserting the element ends into the shield.  I may have slipped the ends into the shield first and then attached the shield to the back wall.

[DocZ]

I started with the materials list from the archived mod from Mr. Walleye (Mike). That called for 10'!  I could have got by with a foot or so for each lead. I ran both leads separately to the spade connectors rather than loading the original element's wires with the current load from both elements. No switch tho. I must have made the relfector holes too snug. Next time I would make them larger or do the slit/bend thing. Thanks for the feedback.

[Habanero Smoker]

If 10 feet of wire is too much, then that may have been my error when I typed up the instructions for the recipe site.

[DocZ]

Mayhaps tweaking to update and streamline these mods by the movers and shakers on this forum ??-jus' saying

[Habanero Smoker]

Mayhaps tweaking to update and streamline these mods by the movers and shakers on this forum ??-jus' saying

Perhaps! But I recall when I wrote the instructions for the recipe site, I took a guess at the amount of wiring Mike used.

[Mr Walleye]

Mayhaps tweaking to update and streamline these mods by the movers and shakers on this forum ??-jus' saying

Perhaps! But I recall when I wrote the instructions for the recipe site, I took a guess at the amount of wiring Mike used.

That was probably me. When I first thought of doing this I had probably ordered 10 feet of wire I just to make sure I had enough, not really sure... that's a long time ago.  ;D

Mike