I have to echo everyone's comments here because this recipe turned out to be the overrated gimmick I suspected it was. I made it because my friends were excited about it, and I wanted to see if there was any substance to the hype. That said, it was a great study in Internet viral marketing.
I made two of these for the Super Bowl. One had sweet sausage, and the other was spicy. Like you guys, I thought the addition of BBQ sauce was out of place, but I wanted to follow the recipe as closely as I could, so I went with it. My original plan was to use a sweeter sauce with the spicy sausage and vice-versa, but I wasn't paying attention and wound up putting Sweet Baby Ray's with the sweet sausage and an Alligator Barbecue Cajun Garlic Sauce with the spicy sausage. In any combination, these flavors seemed like odd matches to me, but I went with it. I used Kevin's South of the Butt Rub on each.
The first one (sweet) took close to 5 hours to reach the desired temperature. I sliced it, and we ate it during the beginning of the fourth quarter. We were already on the verge of food coma, and eating something with fatty, undercooked bacon on the inside was not what the doctor ordered. The second one (hot) took forever, and around 2:30AM, I threw it in the oven with the heat jacked up in hopes I could overcook it enough to melt away some of that inner fat. I let it go until about 169 before I took it off to cool. Then I wrapped it and put it in the fridge overnight.
The next day I took it to work and sliced it thinly while it was cold. Everyone ate it cold, and they all really liked it. I thought it tasted like a pretty good salami, and I would imagine that the garlic in the sauce helped that cause.
I would consider making the second one again at a higher heat, but on the whole, the amount of money and effort you put into this recipe doesn't yield results that make it worthwhile. If you like bacon on the smoker, just make Pig Candy. It's one of the easiest recipes out there, and it tastes way better than this Bacon Explosion.
Note to self: Avoid all future recipes with "explosion" in the name.