Has anyone refurbished a used smoker?

I was looking at something like this:

LINK

I did once. Once. It was an old electric smoker that had dry rotted wires. Plugged it in and then the breaker tripped. Noticed a black ring on my wooden deck and figured I bout got 'lectricuted.

Went straight in the trash.

I have cooked on both the side burners and WSM extensively. The side burners will create a pretty serious hotspot on the side nearest the fire, I think my old side burner there was a 50° difference from one side to the other. I finally overcame this by modifying my smoker into a reverse flow smoker, which really helped to solve that problem. The biggest issue with that side burner is temperature control. On a perfectly calm day, it will usually be ok but trouble was any time a breeze started up the temps would fluctuate wildly, even with a ton of bricks in it as a heatsink. With the WSM, you can put your meat on there and pretty much go to bed once you get familiar with it. Not sure why dude on the F&D board got upset about that, but it is the truth. I guess you have to cook on an easier smoker to appreciate it.

That said, if you like to tinker and make something yours, then by all means buy it. It will cook some great bbq, I can attest to that. I would suggest looking on the net on how to convert it to a reverse flow, tho. It will perform far better and truly be something that is yours.

One more thing, guy on the other board seemed to be against thermometers for some reason also. You need a thermometer to cook good bbq. Bbq'ing without a thermometer is like trying to draw a picture with your eyes shut. Maverick is a good remote thermometer and I really like my thermapen for spot checking.