I know many of you call this a COS, it is, but I have had great success with this unit. First of all I have about $700.00 invested in it. I have purchased the mods from Smokermods.com. Also I spent a lot of time doing mods of my own, and installation of the parts I had purchased. It is a great unit to start with, because it has all the makings of a good smoker. It just needs the finishing touch's. Just do them BEFORE you try to cook with it. I have friends and other people I know that have very expensive rigs, and are impressed with my unit. They have come to my house to have some of my ribs, and saw it in action. I had about a month or so making these mods, taking my time to get it right. Many of us are handy and crafty, that said, I love my Oklahoma Joes smoker, I say give it a chance.
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I don't think OKJ's are horrible. They are definitely way ahead of the char grillers and such. You just seem to have to pay a little more attention to them than some EOS cookers. Not a bad thing if you can be patient and don't mind to have to tinker more frequently.
You can turn out some great Q on them and can mod them up to get better performance out of them. What you have to be careful of is not spending so much time and money on them that you start knocking on the door of an EOS.
I think there are a number of folks here that have them or other COS cookers that they started on and/or because they don't always want to have to fire up a large Cooker for just a couple things.
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Hi Nate, thanks for the response. What I was getting at is the OKJ is a great starter unit, just needs work to make it a really good smoker. I would compare my unit to a $1200.00 unit. I have people with much more expensive units, that have seen mine in action, and love it. Just made mine work really well,Comment
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eglfan01 that's great that you were able to make your cooker better. We would all love to see the mods you did. So pics are in order. Smoke on brother.Comment
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OK Joes are definitely made well.
$700 is 3x more than COS land. I was there and made some great stuff, but wow I don't miss the work nor the lack of sleep.
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If you like it, it doesn't matter what we think.Comment
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Hi Steve B, thanks for your response. Actually you can go on somkermods.com and see all of the products you can purchase to make a COS work better. What I liked about the OKJ was it was heavy, very heavy. It takes a while to preheat, but keeps the heat. Also YouTube has a video on using these mods. The one thing you need to do, is buy it local. Sometimes the assembly is poor, like bad welds, bad fitment and so on. So buying local you can return easily. Also to Jerod, I purchased the OKJ from Walmart for $298.00, and bought the cover there. My investment is a total of mods and misc. items I purchased to make better.Comment
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Hi 6th, thanks for your response. If you read most of what is said on this site, COSs are junk. I agree, but I did a lot of research before buying the OKJ. It was the best fit for me.Comment
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Buy the way to Steve B. I am not that good at putting pictures on. Sorry I am old and not completely computer literate. nice hearing from you.Comment
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Are you planning on doing a tutorial for other members?
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I bought mine in July and only got it to try it out. I have had great success with it as a beginner so for the price I felt I couldn't go wrong. That said now I may break down next year and get a higher end offset smoker.Comment
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Hi 4pikuls, thanks for your reply. You really don't need to buy another smoker. The OKJ is a great platform to upgrade and modify to your preferences. Get the upgrades from BBQsmokermods.com. You get a gasket set, tuning baffle, water pan, fuel holder, and a thermometer. One thing you need to do is add more bolts to the fire box. Since it is in 2 halves. it doesn't line up and seal very well, it comes with 4 bolts to hold it together. I added 8 more bolts and the gasket to make it work better. You can go onto YouTube and search smoker mods to see a lot of upgrades you can do. I wish I knew how to put pictures off mine on. Just don't know how to do it. By the way, I did pork butts yesterday for making sandwich's for the football games today. It kept between 220 and 230 all day. I also use the Maverick 732 digital thermometer, works great.
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I started to look at mods. I would get another smoker because it is small and I am starting to fill it up each time I use it. I need more room. I only bought the 3 in 1 unit because my regular grill took a dump. I was looking at it this weekend while I was smoking and noticed the smoke coming out from that area as well. Just trying to get the hang of it seeing I have only used it 5 times.
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This weekends retirement party for a good friend. 21 years in the military.Attached FilesComment
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