Tighten bands when egg is still hot?

To each his own.

I tightened mine down while the egg was cooling one day. Close to 200*F and I gave the bolts a few more turns and get them to bend a bit. I had a problem with the dome and the base not matching up, huge under bite, gasket getting damaged on the rear side of the grill near the hinge. Lined it up, cranked it down, cooked, and tightened it down at the end and I haven't had to touch it since, and the new gasket discoloring shows that I have it pretty darn close to even, and the gasket isn't messing up.

It was the only thing that worked for me.

I just a tightened them cold with the torque wrench to the 120 in-lbs per instructions. I don't want to void a warranty, but I've read you would break the bolts before the ceramic.

http://www.grill-repair.com/blog/2013/big-green-egg-spring-assisted-band-replacement-instructions/

@CANMAN1976‌ there are so many things I could say. . .

I'll go with the simple:

That's what she said!

I'm glad all the resident mechanical engineers jumped on this.

Let me say that designing around specifications for a product is pretty much how it's done.  If you need an oven to cover 170F to 550F (typical for a kitchen), you engineer your oven to handle those extremes. 

If that dome is loose at 700F, you can tighten it just enough to stay on, and when it cools down, you know you met the specification it was designed around - the expansion differential was to keep the dome tight at some torque spec from ambient to 700 or whatever the upper limit specs are.

I'm saying, if the dome is loose on a pizza cook, tighten it until it's secure.  Don't try to torque the Eff out of it, but just make you barely tighten it to work, hold the lid on, and the specifications of the design will keep it from busting apart when it cools.  You need to understand that to do this, if you don't, don't try.

I'm not encouraging anyone to do this, but this a logical conclusion of specifications we all know (the cooking range) and given a bit of over-design is engineered in anything that goes to consumers that gets abused,... and basic logic.

I tend to agree with this @nolaegghead‌. And definitely don't try if you don't understand it. If you muscle eff it while hot ain't nothing good gonna come from it except for a warranty dome.

Funny. I just looked on the BGE website and they had downloadable PDF assembly instructions. I guess they think their buyers are illiterate. It's all pictures. Since it's all pictures, I'm gonna assume they want you to assemble/adjust it while it's cold. You wouldn't put the firebox in the base and start a fire to assemble it would you??? Why would you heat it up to torque it down?

stemc33 said:

Funny. I just looked on the BGE website and they had downloadable PDF assembly instructions. I guess they think their buyers are illiterate. It's all pictures. Since it's all pictures, I'm gonna assume they want you to assemble/adjust it while it's cold. You wouldn't put the firebox in the base and start a fire to assemble it would you??? Why would you heat it up to torque it down?

I'm not suggesting that.  I'm just saying if the dome is literally falling out while you're cooking you can torque it down enough so it doesn't fall apart.

I gotcha @nolaegghead‌. I was just being facetious. When I worked in the shipyards about 25 years ago, we would use torches to expand big corroded nuts and use slugging wrenches to get them loose. Sometimes it would take an hour of heating and beating for one nut. Anyway, what you said made since. I imagine the bands on the egg expand more than the ceramic, at least at different rates possibly making the dome loose. I would rather tighten a hot loose dome than pick up a broken dome.

I'm with @4Runner here.. I'm smart enough to know what I can and can't do with it. I didn't have to go all wild with it, but a quick snug of the bolts as a final turn while it was warm was enough to make sure my bands stopped slipping and moving around causing alignment issues.

As with most things, YMMV.