Couple Of New Toys - Pron Heavy

WineMaster said:
Let me know how the burn goes using lump Ryan.
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I am a stubborn sucker so I just had to test lump one more time using some of the tips you and Josh provided me! I am pleased to report that the temp has been holding steady at 275 for 2+ hours and temps from bottom rack to top rack are within a few degrees.

Here is what I did, with no water pan since I prefer to cook without water.

* 1/2 Chimney of lit lump poured onto a grate sitting on a 2" sided pan, then placed in the firebox.

* Turn Guru on and set at 275 with damper wide open, let it warm all the metal up and come to temp.

* Get coal basket ready for a horse shoe burn, Josh and Dan both mentioned that less is better with how full you fill the basket. The basket is 6" deep and I filled it maybe 3" full. Leave a small spot to put in some of the lit lump, about the size of a fist is adequate space.

* Once your cooker is up to temp, pull the lit lump out and put about a fistful of it in the space you left in your coal basket. Put basket in the firebox and choke down your guru damper to about 50%.

* I am just doing a test burn today so I am not cooking anything; therefore, I ended up settling with my damper at 25% open, but I bet if I had some meat in there I would be running at 50%.

* I am going to let it go until the temps start to drop, I will report back with a burn time for lump at 275.

Side note - I am not sure if all Guru's are like this but after getting up to temp, I have to unplug my unit and restart it or it continues to blow and over stokes the fire.
 
guru should barely blow once you hit the set point. if it sees temp fall, it will start giving some air but at like a 10-20% cycle. and if it overshoots, it def shouldnt be running.
 
Can you post some more pics of the toy hauler? I am curious about its space.
 
Temp held rock solid for 8 hours, which is a little longer than it usually takes for most of my butts and briskets. I am cooking several butts this weekend so I will take my time and arrange the lump more precisely to see what kind of burn times I can get. I am betting 10-12 hours is possible.
 
Why not a S shape ...more coals longer burn



speers90 said:
In the past month or so I picked up two new bbq related toys and I figured it was time to introduce them. The first was sort of a spur of the moment decision because an opportunity became available that was to good to pass up: Ryan from Big T'z (musicmanryann) was selling his toy hauler to upgrade and I was already planning on buying one this coming August/September. The price was right so I went ahead an pulled the trigger on this:

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The second addition was just picked up on Thursday and I am getting ready to do my first burn and cook this afternoon. It is my new MJH cooker from Backyard Bombers in Cannon Falls, MN.

Front View
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Fold Down Side Shelf
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4 Cooking Racks Plus A Water Pan Shelf & Pan
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Cooking Racks With 5"+ Of Clearance, more racks are available upon request. When I was picking this MJH up I was looking at some of the other cookers Josh was building for other customers and there was another MJH with at least twice as many cooking racks. He said the customer was looking to be able to cook a lot or ribs.
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Firebox With Sliding/Hanging Basket and Sliding Ash Pan. This is pretty much the entire reason I decided to go with the newest version on the MJH. I wanted a much bigger firebox and in my opinion Josh & Backyard Bombers knocked this out of the park. This picture also has the L Brackets setting in the firebox for a Horseshoe pattern burn.
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Here is a better picture of the L brackets forming the horseshoe pattern and loaded up with lump. I left a small space to dump about 1/4-1/3 a chimney of lit lump in.
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Getting ready to light it up. It is hard to tell but the chimney is only about 1/4-1/3 full. I love that I can use the sliding ash pan as a base to get my chimney of lump going. I will try it out this way first, but I can see myself just using a weed burner to light the corner of the lump in the future.
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Thanks for looking, if you have any questions about the MJH let me know. I am so happy with how this new version of the MJH turned out that I already emailed Josh about lead times on a second one.
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The Pigman said:
Why not a S shape ...more coals longer burn
Click to expand...

I think I heard it mentioned with this cooker it isn't ideal to end up in a scenario where you have air directly blowing onto the coals. With the Horse Shoe setup you end up with a void in the middle that the air is being blown into.

Maybe Dan can chime in here as I know he has more experience with both versions of the MJH.
 
JeffR said:
Two nice looking toys. Not familiar with the bomber will have to look into them
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Hey Jeff, nice to see another Waconian on the forum. Let me know if you want to come over and check it out some time.
 
You guys have no idea how happy I am that you started this thread. I am the person that won the 1st-gen MJH at the FireOnIce contest back in March. I've been struggling mightily to get this thing to hold temp for more than 3 hours without temps spiraling out of control.

I checked in with Josh and surprise, I was using WAY too much charcoal. I switched to the horseshoe burn at his suggestion and found some success.
I've also been experimenting with using a weedburner to pre-heat the unit and have had some success with that. I too have the Guru with the 25cfm fan & have also had some success damping down the fan to about 1/3-1/4 once I get close to temp.

I guess my main question is mostly for Dan who has experience with the 1st-gen unit (but anyone else is welcome to chime in!) How exactly did you set up your charcoal burn in your 1st-gen MJH to get a 15hr burn? I've experimented with many different amounts of charcoal and have only been successful keeping the unit under 250F by manually lining up a single row of charcoal. Every time I've tried more charcoal the unit will burn through it WAY too quickly no matter what I try. If I pile the KBB 2-3 coals high in a horseshoe burn it will ignite the underside of the coals and the temps spiral out of control after 2-3hrs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Smoker has 2" of insulation, no air leaks, you guys have guru fans 2.5x as powerful as it needs. Choking the damper does not linearly reduce the amount of air the fan blows. It's real job is to limit air intake when the fan is not cycling. I'm not trying to be a prick but I think you need to try the pit viper fan. The 25cfm fan is for stickburners and very large pits

Finding a way to close down the exhaust will help to keep temps down. When guru'd most insulated vertical owners have the exhaust open only 25% to limit air flow
 
It's hard to disagree with that logic. I also have a Stoker with both 10cfm & 5cfm fans, so my plan is to give those a try on the next couple test burns.
 
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