Lew, I am sure their are many others like me who admire your honestly regarding the Smokefire as well as Dave and Bruno. My neighbor stopped by about 20 minutes ago I had rehabbed a Performer that he brought to me went to a lake house and has already used it 3 or 4 times loves it.
One of his sons is starting to look at pellet grills and since he knows I am a Weber guy he asked me whether Weber had a pellet grill and I took him thru a bunch of these threads specifically yours above, told him not certainly something I could recommend based on the issues really kind of hit him when he read your thread that your opinion is and that is not the end all I get it but to spend that kind of money with a grill that may need another year to be as reliable as a recteq he kind of said to me then why would my son not buy a reqteq. I don't own a pellet grill my answer was do your research on the recteq and the camp chef windwood a plus is recteq since we are in GA so its a local company.