Ultimate List Of Pit Boss Austin XL Modifications: 10 Most Useful Modifications!

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The Pit Boss Austin XL is an extremely impressive pellet grill; it comes at a low price, but its performance surpasses many of the other more expensive pellet grills on the market, so it’s well worth the purchase price.

As you work with the grill, you’ll likely find some limitations or even feature wishes that can lead to you looking for Pit Boss Austin XL modifications to make the grill ever better with a little manual effort on your part.

Detailed below are 10 of the most popular Pit Boss pellet grill modifications, which are reasonably easy to accomplish for anybody.

10 Best Pit Boss Austin XL Modifications

Protect Your Grill With A Cover

One of the first Pit Boss Austin XL modifications that you should be implementing is a good grill cover to provide protection to your grill.

If your Austin XL is going to be sitting outside for any length of time, then it needs to be protected at all times of the year, including water, sunshine, or even hail pelting down on it.

You can opt for a cheaper version that provides minimal coverage and wear down over a year or less, or pay a little more for a heavy-duty version that will last you a long time and provide superior protection so that your grill also lasts a long time.

Add A Front Shelf To Provide A Working Area

On your grill, you have a small side shelf to hold items or help prepare your meat; even loading big trays of meat into the grill from the side trays is going to be a bit tricky, and you might even lose some meat on the ground sometimes.

Looking at Pit Boss Austin XL modifications, the best would be simply adding a front adjustable shelf for more prep room that can be easily tucked away once the prep is done or when you’re finished for the day and want to put your own cover back on.

You can try to find something that fits online or make one yourself; otherwise, buy a pre-done kit for your Austin XL to just get the job done.

The installation is reasonably easy and just requires you to measure the front of your grill and drill appropriate holes to bolt your shelf in place.

Cut Pellet Barrier Away For Easy Distribution

The pellet box on the side of your pellet grill has a somewhat unneeded feature, which is a barrier that restricts the pouring and distribution of your pellets, so you either need to get a stick to poke the pellets around, or you just deal with fewer pellets in the box.

You could look at more advanced Pit Boss Austin XL modifications, or you could simply snip the center of the guard or grate away from the pellet box with tin snips or something similar.

Make sure you leave the edge of the guard in place and check for rough or sharp edges that you need to dull down, or you could injure yourself next time you’re loading pellets.

Remove And Store Your Unused Top Shelf

If you’re not using the top shelf on your Pit Boss pellet grill, instead of it throwing away or storing the shelf in the garage where it may become lost, you can look at one of the more simple Pit Box Boss Austin XL modifications, which is simply storing it on the back of your grill.

Seems simple, and it really is; buy some magnetic hooks that are preferably heavy-duty to handle some load and can deal with the elements outside.

There are even some hooks specially designed for grills that you can pick up.

Upgrade Your Controller To Wifi Enabled

One of the lacking features of most Pit Boss pellet smokers is a good Wifi enabled controller so that everything can be monitored from your phone.

When looking for Pit Boss Austin XL modifications, you can purchase an upgrade kit that gives you a Wifi enabled controller.

It’s considered a legacy device, so it can be challenging to find depending on your exact pellet smoker model.

You may be able to find a PID controller and connect that instead, but it’s a much more challenging process as you’ll need to create a mount as it’s not going to fit into the old compartment.

Installing the Pit Boss Wifi controller upgrade is simple.

Unscrew the bottom panel of the hopper to get access to the wiring
Unclip all of the connectors and push the old controller out
Insert the new controller
Connect the controller back up based on the color-coding of the wires.

You then only need to download the Pit Boss Wifi app to your phone through the Google Play or Apple Store and pair your grill with your phone through Bluetooth.

You’ll need a good Wifi signal that reaches your grill, so distance can be an issue in some cases.

Replace Temperature Gauge For More Accurate Readings

A common complaint from Pit Boss users is that the standard temperature gauge on the front doesn’t give accurate or consistent readings, so many look for Pit Boss Austin XL modifications to deal with that limitation.

You can easily buy a pellet grill temperate gauge from Amazon to get more accurate temperature readings; remember to get any installation kits that may be sold separately to make the installation as simple and pain-free as possible.

Installation only requires unscrewing the old temperate gauge and then screwing the new one into place.

You should ensure that whichever temperature gauge you get will fit the current hole size without any drilling or cutting.

If the temperature gauge doesn’t fit snuggly against your lid, you can use a gasket sealer under the base to keep the seal tight and not lose any heat or smoke.

Add Temperature Probe Capacity And Grommets

Pit Boss pellet smokers typically come with 1 or 2 holes for your temperature probes, and this causes two main issues; you can add one temperature probe per hole, and if you’re not using the hole, it allows smoke to escape, which may not be ideal for your situation.

One of the cheaper Pit Boss Austin XL modifications you can make is to drill more holes for the number of probes you require, but you should install high-temperature grommets to lock the heat in and stop air from escaping; it also protects the area that you’ve drilled.

The added benefit is that if you have been putting more probes in but through the lid opening, then your temperature probe cables will now be protected and last longer.

It’s a common issue for these cables to break fast if they’re put through doors or lids.

Limit Heat And Smoke Loss With Gaskets

When looking for Pit Boss Austin XL Modifications that deal with heat and smoke loss from your pellet grill, the easiest option is to get some high-temperature gasket and seal your lid.

It’s as simple as peeling the back off and applying the gasket to the inside of the lid, right on the edge, so that a tight seal is now in place and blocking anything from escaping.

While you’re using your pellet smoker, you can check to see if there are any other significant areas of smoke loss and see whether your leftover gasket can be used in that location as well.

Setup A Griddle For Big Breakfasts

If you’re looking to make breakfast on your pellet grill or anything else that needs a nice flat surface, rather than the grill racks, one of Pit Boss Austin XL modifications is to get a removable griddle which Pit Boss happens to make, and it fits perfectly into the Austin XL.

By getting a removable griddle, you get the benefits without too much cost or installation requirements for a performant device, and the cleanup is much easier.

A quick and easy modification you can make to the griddle is to drill a hole in the bottom corner so that grease can drain into the grill, and the grease drain will take care of some of the mess.

Upgrade Your Temperature Probes

If you’re cooking meat or anything else for a long time, you should be looking into Pit Boss Austin XL modifications that allow you to check on the meat without having to come back and forth, and that means upgrading your temperature probes.

What would be ideal for getting is a Wifi enabled temperature probe controller that will allow you to check on the temperature manually but also give you an option to set timers and alert you if the temperature is reaching levels that are too high.

There’s nothing worse than a slow cook when the meat overcooks because you got sidetracked, so a temperature probe that can alert you on your phone will save you a bunch of time and money on replacement meat.