18.5" WSM Delivered - Time to step up my Q


 
Lew Newby

Lew Newby

R.I.P. 1/26/2024
FEDEX delivered it this afternoon. I pulled out everything, inventoried it and called Cust Svc to get the missing fiber washers shipped. I spoke to an incredibly nice and helpful lady, Chris, and the washers will be shipped. I used some flat washers out of my hardware box and waited for my 9 yr, old grandson to get back home. It was a long 2 hours but I had told him that we would assemble it together. The center body was round and all parts in great shape. My wife, daughter, and Ethan arrived at 5:15 and we went to work. Assembly took one hour with Ethan doing most of the work and this was Ethan's first job.

As we assembled it we incorporated the following mods. All learned on this site.

Installed side handles. Thanks for the video Clay. Ethan marched right through the job.

Installed Charcoal grate lift handles. Glenn, I used your method and we did that job together. Thanks for the idea and the clear picture. I wired the grate and the fire ring together.

Installed Brinkman charcoal pan in place of the Weber water pan.

Installed a 14.2" clay saucer from HD in the water pan.

I don't know who to thank for the last two items so thank you to everyone that mentioned them.

Thanks Chris for this great site and my bookmarked Amazon link is through this site.

I documented the process and the first 3 or 4 pictures may be ECB pics but the rest show the assembly process and the mods. WSM Assembly and Mods

It has been a great day
 
Ethan did a great Job!

Looking forward to your first cooking post Lew.

Is the Brinkman charcoal pan deeper then the new Weber water pan.?
 
No, it's 2.5" shallower. I added two pictures to the folder (link in original post) and you can see the Brinkman Charcoal Pan next to the Weber water pan. The straight sides of the Brinkman pan vs the curved sides of the Weber account for the water capacity being near equal. The folks that talked about this change said it was to have more clearance between the bottom of the pan and the top of the charcoal and they hold about the same amount of water. That allows you to reach all the charcoal through the access door to clear ash off the coals. As someone noted in the mods forum the Brinkman is much lighter metal but it fits and it will do the job.
 
What an great time for you two. Ethan looks quite the pro!
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Lew congrats! I've never had an issue with weber customer service either. I actually had to get an entire new smoker becuase it was destroyed in shipment. They woman was shocked of what I told her it looked like and asked for me to send some pics just as a confirmation and I did and she called me back immediately and sent out an entire new smoker (the 3 pieces not everything else). It was so badly damaged that it couldn't have been assembled with other pieces to make a second one.
 
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