« Reply #15 on: May 26, 2018, 09:13:07 AM »
I think for long cooks I prefer my Happy Cooker over my 22 inch Masters Touch. For some reason it seems to keep temperature more evenly over the length of the cook. I used to use heavy duty tin foil on the bottom of the Weber to control where air flows, but the internal ash pan of the Happy cooker seems to do that by fluke of design. So long cooks using the snake method come to temp and are very stable. The down side is the ease of the one touch system of the Weber is lost to the fact you have to manually lift out the ash pan and pour the ash into a bag.
Now even though I like that, there are many improvements to the Weber I miss while using the HC, such as the Bale lid holder, built in thermometer, One touch clean up and such.
I think designing a internal ash catcher for the Weber would overcome those problems. Who knows, I may even get rich.
Anyway, if it is a Happy Cooker, congratulations you have not only a great cooker, but a piece of history that is getting rarer all the time. Clean it up and be proud a lot of guys would kill to have one in the Remuda.
You are on the money about airflow and long slow cooks with the internal ash pan.
I'm using one under my Hunsaker Vortex firebasket on my SSP/WSM setup. With it it mimics the same as my Hunsaker drums because they thrive on very little intake.
Logged
I cook on: Backwoods Gater, Lang 36, Hunsaker Smokers, Pellet Pro 22" WSM, BGE's, WSM's, Cajun Bandits, PK Grills, Drum Smokers, Genesis Silver C, Weber Q's, Cookshack 008, Little Chief, La Caja China #2, Lodge Sportsman...oh yeah! Weber Kettles! Kamado restoration and pit modification hack!