To me, the most frightening aspect of owning a very large ceramic cooker is the idea of having to adjust the metal bands that hold the lid to the base of the cooker. I've had my giant beast over 15 years, and have never set wrench to the bolts on my bands.
But my old cooker has been having some issues. Early in low and slow cooks, I have been seeing A LOT of smoke escaping where the lid meets the base. Later in low and slow, I've been having minor temperature excursions upwards and on a cook or two, I've closed the upper vent more or less all the way. With the temp too high, the blower isn't running so this should choke off the fire, but it often chugs along in the 275 range for hours like that.
On inspecting the bands closely, it appeared that the lid was shifted upward at the very back. Being dumb, I reasoned that simply loosening the bolts on the upper band would allow the lid to nestle back down to the level it should sit. With trepidation, I checked the very short set of "instructions" that came with the cooker, praying there would be a torque setting recommended for re-tightening the bolts so as not to crack the ceramic. No such luck. There is just a statement not to over-tighten to the point of cracking.
Soooo, I went ahead and loosened the bolts. With the bands quite loose, the back of the lid went nowhere. Did I mention previously that I'm dumb? Well, if I weren't, I would have looked closely enough before starting to see that the hinge at the back sets the spacing between the upper and lower bands. Further, and this is the really dumb part, I would have remembered that all that smoke I see when my wood chunks start burning is coming more from the very front of the lid rather than the back. So all that wrestling I did with the lid trying to tilt the back lower into the band was in fact the absolute opposite of what I should have been doing. The settling that needed to happen with the bands loose was at the front. In fact, my wife, who is MUCH smarter than me, noted that she could see a gap around the front of the lid when she put her head down to where the lid and base come together.
And sure enough, with the bands loose, that gap in the front magically closed. So I tightened the bolts, scared to death I'd hear a devastating "CRACK". But they tightened just fine. Once I got them to what felt like about how tight they were before I started, I eagerly looked at the gap. Sadly, it was back. It appears that somehow the bands just want to allow the back of the lid to go too low (even though the band sits in a position relative to the lid that would make you think it's holding the back of the lid too high--this is crazy-making) when the bands are properly tightened.
So, back to more staring at the cooker, this time with the lid up. Looking at the gasket, I could see that the gasket on the base was worn almost all the way through and threadbare at the very back, but only for a stretch of about six inches. Remarkably, I remembered a bit of extra gasket material had come with the cooker all those years ago. Even more remarkably, I found it! This gasket material is so old it predates the self-adhesive type.
Placing one end of the extra gasket material over one end of the worn spot and letting the other end drape out the back of the cooker past the other end of the wear seems to allow it to stay in place for now. The good news is that with the extra gasket material in place, I can now re-tighten the bolts almost all the way while the gap in the lid at the front stays sealed.
This really looks to me like it's going to work. I am cooking a pork loin Thursday, so I can't wait to see if I restrict the smoke to only coming out the top vent. It's a short cook, so I won't see if the low temp control is improved, too, but I'd be shocked if those two things aren't linked.
I've also ordered some self-adhesive gasket material so that I can put a proper size piece in permanently if this fixes the problem.
Here's how it looks now.
This is a view from one side where you can see both bands, the bolts on that side (there's an identical set directly on the other side) and the hinge. You can see the supplemental gasket material hanging out.

Here is the view with the lid open, showing how short the worn section of gasket is (the wear pattern seems to line up precisely with the hinge):

And here's the view from behind showing a better view of the hinge and how it fixes the distance between bands as well as being bolted directly too the base. There is this bolt in the center of the back and two more part way around the sides.

This view shows really well the deceptive way the lid looks tilted up in the band even though the smoke leak tells us it's actually tilted down.
I'm just going to live for now with leaving the bolts a bit looser than they were when I started. There's little to no movement of the lid inside the band that I can detect as I open it, so I don't think I'm doing bad things by letting the lid and base move too much relative to one another. I only need to get about another year out of this cooker because at least for now, I don't see how I can integrate it into my dream outdoor kitchen when we build it.
I'll update this after Thursday's cook to see how all these changes behave when the cooker goes to temperature.
But my old cooker has been having some issues. Early in low and slow cooks, I have been seeing A LOT of smoke escaping where the lid meets the base. Later in low and slow, I've been having minor temperature excursions upwards and on a cook or two, I've closed the upper vent more or less all the way. With the temp too high, the blower isn't running so this should choke off the fire, but it often chugs along in the 275 range for hours like that.
On inspecting the bands closely, it appeared that the lid was shifted upward at the very back. Being dumb, I reasoned that simply loosening the bolts on the upper band would allow the lid to nestle back down to the level it should sit. With trepidation, I checked the very short set of "instructions" that came with the cooker, praying there would be a torque setting recommended for re-tightening the bolts so as not to crack the ceramic. No such luck. There is just a statement not to over-tighten to the point of cracking.
Soooo, I went ahead and loosened the bolts. With the bands quite loose, the back of the lid went nowhere. Did I mention previously that I'm dumb? Well, if I weren't, I would have looked closely enough before starting to see that the hinge at the back sets the spacing between the upper and lower bands. Further, and this is the really dumb part, I would have remembered that all that smoke I see when my wood chunks start burning is coming more from the very front of the lid rather than the back. So all that wrestling I did with the lid trying to tilt the back lower into the band was in fact the absolute opposite of what I should have been doing. The settling that needed to happen with the bands loose was at the front. In fact, my wife, who is MUCH smarter than me, noted that she could see a gap around the front of the lid when she put her head down to where the lid and base come together.
And sure enough, with the bands loose, that gap in the front magically closed. So I tightened the bolts, scared to death I'd hear a devastating "CRACK". But they tightened just fine. Once I got them to what felt like about how tight they were before I started, I eagerly looked at the gap. Sadly, it was back. It appears that somehow the bands just want to allow the back of the lid to go too low (even though the band sits in a position relative to the lid that would make you think it's holding the back of the lid too high--this is crazy-making) when the bands are properly tightened.
So, back to more staring at the cooker, this time with the lid up. Looking at the gasket, I could see that the gasket on the base was worn almost all the way through and threadbare at the very back, but only for a stretch of about six inches. Remarkably, I remembered a bit of extra gasket material had come with the cooker all those years ago. Even more remarkably, I found it! This gasket material is so old it predates the self-adhesive type.
Placing one end of the extra gasket material over one end of the worn spot and letting the other end drape out the back of the cooker past the other end of the wear seems to allow it to stay in place for now. The good news is that with the extra gasket material in place, I can now re-tighten the bolts almost all the way while the gap in the lid at the front stays sealed.
This really looks to me like it's going to work. I am cooking a pork loin Thursday, so I can't wait to see if I restrict the smoke to only coming out the top vent. It's a short cook, so I won't see if the low temp control is improved, too, but I'd be shocked if those two things aren't linked.
I've also ordered some self-adhesive gasket material so that I can put a proper size piece in permanently if this fixes the problem.
Here's how it looks now.
This is a view from one side where you can see both bands, the bolts on that side (there's an identical set directly on the other side) and the hinge. You can see the supplemental gasket material hanging out.
Here is the view with the lid open, showing how short the worn section of gasket is (the wear pattern seems to line up precisely with the hinge):
And here's the view from behind showing a better view of the hinge and how it fixes the distance between bands as well as being bolted directly too the base. There is this bolt in the center of the back and two more part way around the sides.
This view shows really well the deceptive way the lid looks tilted up in the band even though the smoke leak tells us it's actually tilted down.
I'm just going to live for now with leaving the bolts a bit looser than they were when I started. There's little to no movement of the lid inside the band that I can detect as I open it, so I don't think I'm doing bad things by letting the lid and base move too much relative to one another. I only need to get about another year out of this cooker because at least for now, I don't see how I can integrate it into my dream outdoor kitchen when we build it.
I'll update this after Thursday's cook to see how all these changes behave when the cooker goes to temperature.
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