Charcoal pan mods to an ECB

Thanks. I wound up getting some screws that were 1/4" x 2" since they were stainless steel and not zinc coated. I'm gonna see if those work. I also ordered the lava pan, which comes with the one vent hole in it already. It looks like you drilled 1, maybe 2 more holes in it for better air flow. Is this correct? My biggest drill bit is 1/2", but what size roughly were the holes and did you leave these open or cover them with a piece of metal or something? Thanks again for the clarification.

Thanks for the tips. I'll have to post pics when the mods are done. Two more questions though...

With the charcoal grate from the WSJ resting in the bottom of the ECB charcoal pan, there's probably only about 3/4 in between the grate and bottom of the pan? Is that sufficient or did you bother to try and pop in some bolts and raise it up a tad?

Also, did you roll with briquettes or lump? I've read up on it and I'm now inclined to go with the lump...probably Ozark Oak since I've seen good reviews on it and it's on Amazon.

hamiltont said:

I use both lump & briquette in it. I like the lump for the minimal amount of ash but it won't last long enough for a pork butt w/o reloading. Actually I don't think the briquettes will last long enough in the bowl either. I didn't prop up the WSJ grate but I really don't recall the smokes with the "swiss cheese" bowl because I quickly built an expanded metal basket. That works WAY much better. With a full load of briquettes in the basket I can easily get a 12 hour burn @ 250-275F. It works perfect for 2 butts. I can do 4 butts on it but I have to stand them on edge and use a couple Bamboo Shish Kabob skewers through the top corners to prop them up. They sorta keep each other from falling over. Cheers!!!

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Interesting. I know the lump burns faster, but I liked that it made less ash and with the vents on the lava pan, I should be able to control the heat pretty well. I've seen some builds and tutorials for the charcoal basket but I hesitate about trying to make one after seeing how people had to shape it or bend it with 2x4's, propane tanks, etc. But the ones I saw online, pre-built were at or north of $50 and this is my first foray into metal work. Yet it looks worthwhile so I might try and build one.

Thanks for the suggestions. I wound up using the lava rock pan suggestion and the top of the ECB fits more or less snugly on top of the lava pan.

My next issue is that I've bit the bullet on the charcoal ring and decided it'd be a good thing to do. I also decided to emulate this guy's build, as I'm certainly no welder:

http://www.grilling24x7.com/UDS2.shtml

So off to HD I went. I picked up the 24" x 24" sheet of expanded metal, as folks have suggested to get. To cut said metal, I also picked up a laser guided jig saw with a set of blades, along with some of the SS hardware for the build, with the intention of now having this sit on top of the 10.5" WSJG charcoal grate.

For those that fabricated a round charcoal ring for a modded out ECB, how tall did you make it? It would 10.5" in diameter to match the WSJG charcoal grill, but it looks like, judging from the position of the water bowl, that 6'" might be about right, but I also like the extra capacity if it were to ever come in handy so maybe 8"?

The charcoal ring was going to sit in the charcoal pan (raised with bolts) that I had drilled holes in, yet now it seems like, if I pop some SS bolts onto the grate and put the grate in the lava pan, I might not even need to bother with the ECB charcoal pan because the raised grate should provide airflow and sufficient space for ash removal. Go figure. Looks like I've gone overboard on the mods a bit. I'll have to take pics when it's all said and done.

Carbon said:

This photo may or may not help you but this is the charcoal pan and base of my modified Gourmet. The expended metal is about 5" tall, and is simply secured using some rebar wire, and nothing else.

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Thanks. I figured the height was in the ballpark of 5" - 6" to maintain enough space between the top of the coals and the bottom of the water pan. That was pretty much what I was thinking of doing until I stumbled across the tutorial for the charcoal ring. This would now render the original ECB charcoal pan redundant. In any case, I'll probably just finish drilling the holes in the ECB fire pan anyway and I'll have ot, since I plan on doing a few test runs, w/o food, so I'm curious which set up will work better (burn times, temp control, etc).

Also, what size charcoal grate is that? 15" or so? I like the bigger size. I've got a 10.5 in from the WSJ currently, and the diameter of the lava pan is 17" or 17.5". It's tempting to scale up to the bigger grate though...Thx.