Dustin Dorsey
TVWBB Hall of Fame
A gasket would fix the sticking lid. I did the 225 thing for years and I've had some brutally long cooks as a result. At 225 you are just barely above the boiling point of water. During the stall, the meat is contracting and pushing water to the surface which is turn cools down the surface. The stall can last HOURS. I'm talking 6 hours watching the temp not budging and in fact in some cases going back down. When the meat is in the stall stage you can actually safely apply more heat without burning anything up. What you might do is run 225 and then when you hit the stall go up to 275.