Best Gasket Kit


 
So quick update. I installed gasket from BBQGaskets.com around the door and top middle section. The process of cleaning years worth of gunk is not fun. I have not cooked on it yet and will update when I do. I have cooked some good food on the smoker but I had about the same amount of smoke come out of the vent and from under the lid. If I close all the vents on my cooker the charcoal will not go out. Everyone says they get gunked up enough to seal and my never got there. To clean the gunk I used a food safe oven cleaner and plastic putty knife. The installation isn't really easy. You have to custom fit the gasket and lay down a bead of glue and glue gasket on there. I plan to put a full load of charcoal in cooker and burn it out on Friday before putting food in there. I will update with how it goes.

I was too busy to run smoker after installing because I was at the Cowboys playoff game! Wife and I had some good tickets!

 
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Well Jerry, I have learned after 37 years of marriage that that best approach is "yes dear, whatever you say dear". That earns me points for things that are important to me. Example, I don't really care what color paint we use for most rooms as long as it is not pink. Works every time.
 
Jerry N. said:
This is what I don't understand. I have no gaskets and I too can shut my vents and reuse my charcoal. I think that's a pretty reasonable test of whether or not the WSM is tight enough. Which leads me to think that the gaskets are just making up for flaws in the unit. I believe those flaws can be corrected without gaskets by spending a little time with the door and coaxing the center section into round. To each his/her own (and I mean that sincerely), but I see putting the gasket on the WSM as a gimmick and spending money unnecessarily. (of course I've never spend money unnecessarily :) ) Something to keep in mind however if money or time are tight.
Click to expand...

There probably is a lot to what your are saying. The first mod I did was the cajun bandit door. It worked great and I think I had the unit pretty well sealed with that alone but then I broke my handle try to "fix" it. I bought the compression latch and managed to flatten the curve on my door pushing too hard trying to drill out the hole so the latch fit. So then it leaked worse. I did the gasket after that and then wound up bending the door back to the proper curve anyway. Still I did the gasket and it's air tight. It's not like the gasket is all that much.

Bending can be risky. If you bend to far you can crack your enamel. One advantage the gasket is that it keeps you from getting your lid stuck. Over time the gunk can make it pretty sticky.

No mods are really necessary. The smoker works great out of the box. Some of us can't stop ourselves from tinkering with things.
 
I picked up both the Nomex 22" kit for my 18" WSM and the Unlimited BBQ hinge directly from Island Outdoors website. It was the cheapest total price incl. shipping that I could find.

I used warm soapy water (Dawn) and a sponge to go over all areas that were to receive the red food safe adhesive. Changed out the soapy water several times in the process, removing years of gunk build up.

Afterwards, I dried out the areas, then went back over with Simple Green and a scotch brite sponge pad. Clean as a whistle.

I did not stretch out the gasket on the bottom of the middle section, or anywhere else for that matter. I also put the gasket directly on the back of my Cajun Bandit door. Marked and cut the gasket with an exacto knife to fit around the bolt of the compression latch.

Let everything sit for two days in the garage before putting the WSM back together since it was cold. The bottom was a tight fit with the middle, but with equal pressure all of the way around it worked out great. No leakage whatsoever.

I also switched from a toothpick to toothbrush to spread the bead of adhesive out about halfway thru the job...big time saver.

Very happy with the results. I would say that had I known the size of gasket I would have looked for a larger roll to split with a friend and saved some money if at all possible.
 
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Forgot to mention...putting the middle grate in at midnight with two 8 lb butts and getting around that compression latch surprised me and was a little tricky.
 
I promised I would update when I used my WSM after installing gasket. On 1/5 I installed the gasket kit from BBQ gasket.com. You read above about my installation etc.

I lit a chimney full of charcoal on Friday and burned out the WSM. I wanted to make sure any oven cleaner fumes and any other gasket fumes burnt off.

The kit worked very well. I used to have a significant amount of smoke come from under the lid and I had none after the gasket was installed. The door leaked pretty bad and it sealed well also. It was very hard to latch the door with the gasket. After I cooked twice the gasket got a little thinner and I could latch better.

If you have smoke loss issues I would recommend the kit. For the first time I closed all of the bottom vents and the charcoal went out!

gasket installed before cooking. Clean and white.




After cooking a little gunked up.
 
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