More about the name a little later. After several weather delays in shipping, my MAK 2 Star General finally made it home about 11:00 AM Yesterday. The abridged version of this overly long introduction is that I'm very impressed with the quality of the MAK. It's build quality definitely reflects the asking price. It's hard to compare it to something like the Memphis as the Memphis is sleek like a Ferrari where the MAK is a different kind of sexy like a King Ranch F-150. It feels every bit as solid as my Memphis did.
I had heard many estimates of 2-3 hours to assemble, so I cracked it open over lunch thinking I'd take maybe a 90 minute lunch and get most of it knocked out so that I could have it ready for the small window I had help to get it around the patio between 4:15-5:00.
As soon as I opened it up, I was very impressed. It was packaged beautifully, MAK put the accessories I ordered (cover, WiFi module, and front door, right into safe places on inside the box. As I started unpacking it I was growing more and more impressed. I knew it was thicker/better steel, but the heft of all the parts was still surprising:
After I finally found the parts, tools and manual safely packed away inside the grease drawer, I spread things out and got ready to assemble. I loved the full American made allen set wrench Meathad points out in his review as well as their nicely labeled ziplock bags with all the parts:
So, I started to very carefully and deliberately assemble the grill. I ended up assembling the entire thing solo outside of a couple minutes when my daughter helped me life the grill body onto the base. Between going solo, taking my time, and trying to remove or not install anything heavy that wasn't part of the core grill the assembly turned into quite an adventure of every very minor inconvenience you could think of. My wife would end up being my help to move it to the patio traveling through the house - so all internal parts like grates, flamezone, firepot, front cabinet door, handles, etc. were installed outside in the cold and wind after transport. Usually, I call my son that's at college about 20 miles away to come help and he's usually willing if I offer to feed him or fill up his gas tank, but he has 4 exams this week, so I said keep studying.
The wacky stuff started on assembly step two and went from there. I was assembling the base and dropped a nut. Since there was a pile of nuts yet there I just grabbed another and figured I'd get that one from underneath when I stood up the base and moved it. When I got done, I couldn't find the nut anywhere. I finally figured out the nut fell into a channel in the base. I had to remove one of the legs panels to get it out and reassemble the base again.
With the base installed, the daughter helped me lift the body onto the base. With everything removed from the inside, it's not all that heavy, especially the side without the hopper, but my heart skipped a couple beats when I though she was going to drop it over the super short distance we had to travel as I had the base right in front of the body. We got it on the base and I started working on all the screws there.
This is were you really start to see the quality of the manufacturing, but also can run into a lot of frustration. Manufacturing tolerances at MAK are so precise, that you have to have every hole line up perfectly to get the screws in. For this part of the assembly, try to keep the person that just helped you lift the body onto the base stick around and help hold, shift, maneuver the body around. I attacked it solo and think it made a lot more work out of it. I expected a little frustration on this step from info others shared with me, but when you put a decently hefty body on a base that hasn't been fully tightened up yet (you fully tighten the back panel screws after this step), you seem to end up with a lot of shifting and such to get the screws in. My luck, every screw that was close to an obstacle where you could only turn the allen wrench about 1/4-1/2 turn at a time would only go in about a 1/4 of the way by hand. They had to be turned the rest of the way by wrench. They all turned easy with the wrench, just hard enough not to be able to turn with bare fingers. As well, having one of these ball end hex drivers before assembly would be very handy for the more confined machine screws: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I had about 1/2 the screws in by time my 90 minutes was chewed up. I didn't have anything pressing at work, so I ended up taking the afternoon off to finish it up before the wife got home. Not only did I need her help, the grill was in her garage spot since she was gone when it arrived.
I ended up monkeying with 1 single screw for probably 20 to 30 minutes. Half the screws go into nuts welded on to the base. One of the most confined of these spots either had a bolt with a bad threads welded to the base or I messed up the start trying to get the screw in. I turned the screw a couple turns and the screw started leaning. Anyway, after taking that screw out and trying to start a couple other screws, I went on to the rest and came back to this one last. I ended up having to run a screw through backwards from the base via a very confined little cavity to reform the last couple threads on the grill end of the nut. Then I had to use the wrench the entire time when putting it back through the grill body into the base.
After an interruption from the Schwan's delivery, I attached the warmer box issue free
and decided to install the WiFi module. I've read numerous warnings about this and used to program EEPROMs a long time ago, so figured I had this down. I could easily see which way it went and how delicate the pins looked. For good design reasons, they have the pins angled out just slightly, so the module doesn't fall out in the vertical orientation inside the grill. However, it makes in a little nerve wracking as you have to give it a little more pressure that you want to get it to 'pop' in. It ended up going in with no problems, but when your holding that expensive little add on thinking about snapping pins off, putting that much pressure made me stress a bit.
I wanted to setup the WiFi in the garage with the space heater nearby versus out in the cold wind. However, I did discover the downside to setting it up immediately on a new MAK. If you've never had a MAK previously, you need to learn the controls a bit since it's a controller that was originally designed to offer a lot of functionality using 5 buttons to maneuver everything. I ended up getting lost in the menus after putting in my SSID and password and did not see the note that I needed to 'save' them before powering it off. So, I lost the settings and had to enter them again when I cycled power to get back tot he start menu. I read the directions again and got it saved after the second time. Grill connected to my guest network easily.
By this time I was in my help window so the wife helped me haul McNapper over the hills and through the house to the patio. Hooray!
After about a dozen trips getting all the internals in place, installing handles, putting on the front door, and pre-washing the grates, I was ready for burn in. The manual specifically mentioned the bag of Bear Mountain pellets and the 20lb hopper capacity that would hold all of them, so I just dumped the entire bag in. Well, the hopper will hold 20 pounds, but barely. I had to rustle pellets everywhere to get the hopper lid to close (MAKs have a hopper lid sensor that stops the auger). I'm thinking awesome, I can fire this bad boy up for burn in, stop at the store and grab a steak to try for a first cook when I go pick up my daughter from youth group, and see what McNapper will do.
This is where Karma kicks me right in the rear end. Someone was talking about auger jams on another forum, and I made the mistake of saying that they were often overstated and if you kept things clean and dry, they shouldn't really ever happen. Go to fire McNapper up and guess what, auger will not turn.
After pickup up the daughter and some fast food, I drained the hopper and found the jam. Basically, my luck is that all the rustling of the pellets I did to get them all in there must have packed them tight and oddly around the auger opening and there was a wad of pellets wedged between the auger itself and the edge of the opening to the auger tube. I grabbed a non marring mini pry bar (like you use for car interiors or opening electronics) and was able to break those pellets up. I was finally in business. I gently poured about 1/2 the pellets back in and did the recommended burn in. End of Night 1. EDIT: Ended up likely being a bad bag of pellets, had another jam couple days later, but none so far since emptying out those pellets.
I should have gotten a few more pictures, but I was getting tired and very cold as it was hard to have gloves on doing a lot of the outdoor work.
EDIT: A couple details I should have included originally. Not a drop of blood was shed during assembly which is very unusual at least for me when assembling a grill solo. Usually you find a sharp edge somewhere when your trying to maneuver stuff around and hold in place yourself. I haven't found any edge close to sharp anywhere on this.
The step everyone complains about went problem free. I put a few drops of some blue dawn (because it's probably due to the color) inside the rubber grip and slid it right on the metal handle. I had a paper towel to increase grip, started it and then worked in around the bend pretty easily just spinning as I went.
Finally, I wasn't upset or angry at all, I'm very happy with the purchase and the quality of the grill, I just figured you'd all find some entertainment in how my luck usually seems to roll. A second set of hands when fastening the grill to the cart would help a lot, basically someone to shift it a little bit or put pressure on the outside of the legs while you put screws in.
I had heard many estimates of 2-3 hours to assemble, so I cracked it open over lunch thinking I'd take maybe a 90 minute lunch and get most of it knocked out so that I could have it ready for the small window I had help to get it around the patio between 4:15-5:00.
As soon as I opened it up, I was very impressed. It was packaged beautifully, MAK put the accessories I ordered (cover, WiFi module, and front door, right into safe places on inside the box. As I started unpacking it I was growing more and more impressed. I knew it was thicker/better steel, but the heft of all the parts was still surprising:
After I finally found the parts, tools and manual safely packed away inside the grease drawer, I spread things out and got ready to assemble. I loved the full American made allen set wrench Meathad points out in his review as well as their nicely labeled ziplock bags with all the parts:
So, I started to very carefully and deliberately assemble the grill. I ended up assembling the entire thing solo outside of a couple minutes when my daughter helped me life the grill body onto the base. Between going solo, taking my time, and trying to remove or not install anything heavy that wasn't part of the core grill the assembly turned into quite an adventure of every very minor inconvenience you could think of. My wife would end up being my help to move it to the patio traveling through the house - so all internal parts like grates, flamezone, firepot, front cabinet door, handles, etc. were installed outside in the cold and wind after transport. Usually, I call my son that's at college about 20 miles away to come help and he's usually willing if I offer to feed him or fill up his gas tank, but he has 4 exams this week, so I said keep studying.
The wacky stuff started on assembly step two and went from there. I was assembling the base and dropped a nut. Since there was a pile of nuts yet there I just grabbed another and figured I'd get that one from underneath when I stood up the base and moved it. When I got done, I couldn't find the nut anywhere. I finally figured out the nut fell into a channel in the base. I had to remove one of the legs panels to get it out and reassemble the base again.
With the base installed, the daughter helped me lift the body onto the base. With everything removed from the inside, it's not all that heavy, especially the side without the hopper, but my heart skipped a couple beats when I though she was going to drop it over the super short distance we had to travel as I had the base right in front of the body. We got it on the base and I started working on all the screws there.
This is were you really start to see the quality of the manufacturing, but also can run into a lot of frustration. Manufacturing tolerances at MAK are so precise, that you have to have every hole line up perfectly to get the screws in. For this part of the assembly, try to keep the person that just helped you lift the body onto the base stick around and help hold, shift, maneuver the body around. I attacked it solo and think it made a lot more work out of it. I expected a little frustration on this step from info others shared with me, but when you put a decently hefty body on a base that hasn't been fully tightened up yet (you fully tighten the back panel screws after this step), you seem to end up with a lot of shifting and such to get the screws in. My luck, every screw that was close to an obstacle where you could only turn the allen wrench about 1/4-1/2 turn at a time would only go in about a 1/4 of the way by hand. They had to be turned the rest of the way by wrench. They all turned easy with the wrench, just hard enough not to be able to turn with bare fingers. As well, having one of these ball end hex drivers before assembly would be very handy for the more confined machine screws: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I had about 1/2 the screws in by time my 90 minutes was chewed up. I didn't have anything pressing at work, so I ended up taking the afternoon off to finish it up before the wife got home. Not only did I need her help, the grill was in her garage spot since she was gone when it arrived.
I ended up monkeying with 1 single screw for probably 20 to 30 minutes. Half the screws go into nuts welded on to the base. One of the most confined of these spots either had a bolt with a bad threads welded to the base or I messed up the start trying to get the screw in. I turned the screw a couple turns and the screw started leaning. Anyway, after taking that screw out and trying to start a couple other screws, I went on to the rest and came back to this one last. I ended up having to run a screw through backwards from the base via a very confined little cavity to reform the last couple threads on the grill end of the nut. Then I had to use the wrench the entire time when putting it back through the grill body into the base.
After an interruption from the Schwan's delivery, I attached the warmer box issue free
and decided to install the WiFi module. I've read numerous warnings about this and used to program EEPROMs a long time ago, so figured I had this down. I could easily see which way it went and how delicate the pins looked. For good design reasons, they have the pins angled out just slightly, so the module doesn't fall out in the vertical orientation inside the grill. However, it makes in a little nerve wracking as you have to give it a little more pressure that you want to get it to 'pop' in. It ended up going in with no problems, but when your holding that expensive little add on thinking about snapping pins off, putting that much pressure made me stress a bit.I wanted to setup the WiFi in the garage with the space heater nearby versus out in the cold wind. However, I did discover the downside to setting it up immediately on a new MAK. If you've never had a MAK previously, you need to learn the controls a bit since it's a controller that was originally designed to offer a lot of functionality using 5 buttons to maneuver everything. I ended up getting lost in the menus after putting in my SSID and password and did not see the note that I needed to 'save' them before powering it off. So, I lost the settings and had to enter them again when I cycled power to get back tot he start menu. I read the directions again and got it saved after the second time. Grill connected to my guest network easily.
By this time I was in my help window so the wife helped me haul McNapper over the hills and through the house to the patio. Hooray!
After about a dozen trips getting all the internals in place, installing handles, putting on the front door, and pre-washing the grates, I was ready for burn in. The manual specifically mentioned the bag of Bear Mountain pellets and the 20lb hopper capacity that would hold all of them, so I just dumped the entire bag in. Well, the hopper will hold 20 pounds, but barely. I had to rustle pellets everywhere to get the hopper lid to close (MAKs have a hopper lid sensor that stops the auger). I'm thinking awesome, I can fire this bad boy up for burn in, stop at the store and grab a steak to try for a first cook when I go pick up my daughter from youth group, and see what McNapper will do.
This is where Karma kicks me right in the rear end. Someone was talking about auger jams on another forum, and I made the mistake of saying that they were often overstated and if you kept things clean and dry, they shouldn't really ever happen. Go to fire McNapper up and guess what, auger will not turn.
After pickup up the daughter and some fast food, I drained the hopper and found the jam. Basically, my luck is that all the rustling of the pellets I did to get them all in there must have packed them tight and oddly around the auger opening and there was a wad of pellets wedged between the auger itself and the edge of the opening to the auger tube. I grabbed a non marring mini pry bar (like you use for car interiors or opening electronics) and was able to break those pellets up. I was finally in business. I gently poured about 1/2 the pellets back in and did the recommended burn in. End of Night 1. EDIT: Ended up likely being a bad bag of pellets, had another jam couple days later, but none so far since emptying out those pellets.
I should have gotten a few more pictures, but I was getting tired and very cold as it was hard to have gloves on doing a lot of the outdoor work.
EDIT: A couple details I should have included originally. Not a drop of blood was shed during assembly which is very unusual at least for me when assembling a grill solo. Usually you find a sharp edge somewhere when your trying to maneuver stuff around and hold in place yourself. I haven't found any edge close to sharp anywhere on this.
The step everyone complains about went problem free. I put a few drops of some blue dawn (because it's probably due to the color) inside the rubber grip and slid it right on the metal handle. I had a paper towel to increase grip, started it and then worked in around the bend pretty easily just spinning as I went.
Finally, I wasn't upset or angry at all, I'm very happy with the purchase and the quality of the grill, I just figured you'd all find some entertainment in how my luck usually seems to roll. A second set of hands when fastening the grill to the cart would help a lot, basically someone to shift it a little bit or put pressure on the outside of the legs while you put screws in.
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