Here is what I'm doing to get those hot spots gone. First I bought a bigger water pan at Ace hardware. I think it holds a little more water but the lip around the outside is much wider. You have to kinda push a little to get it in the smoker but the larger lip keeps all the heat from going to the left side. I also put in a couple of steel sheets with holes. You can move them around a bit and help defuse the high heat areas. You can also put in a second set of these sheets a little higher up to further even out the heat. I also use a dual probe remote so I can see what the temp is at the top, and the bottom and then the door unit tells me what's going on in the center. after you use the remotes, you can just about guess from the top of bottom reading what the other two zones are going to be. Before I added the larger water pan and the sheets of steel, I had to keep everything about 4 inches from the left side because allot of the heat would hit the deflector, then under the regulat sized pan, then right up the left side. Burned up a few things on the first couple of cooks.
