The repair has held up very well (some screws that hold the plates to the old walls burn up and need replacing periodically), but to be fair I have been grilling less since the repair compared to before it.
After completing the firebox repair, I found that I now had a problem with "sawdust" falling thru into the fan/wiring compartment which would then pile up inside and ultimately start falling thru the vent grate on the bottom of the hopper area and making a nice pile on the shelf that connects the four legs of the smoker together.
The sawdust was broken pellet bits that inevitably get pushed up by the auger on their way to the top of the chute. This was somehow caused by the repair process I did to the firebox wall repair (loosening the chute and auger assembly screws to wiggle side plating around it.) It seemed that no matter what I tried to align the auger to the top of the chute I could not make the parts connect/seal 100% and bits would fall out as the auger pushed the pellets over the hump. As you could imagine, after a while a huge pile of sawdust built up in the wiring area caused a fire. Luckily I was there when it started and avoided catastrophy (like my deck catching fire!)
I replaced the fan which burned up and fixed some wiring insulation problems, but still could not make the connection perfect and sawdust kept piling up. Ultimately I was frustrated with parts burning out and the problems I had and got a new grill of a different brand (this is a couple years after the initial fix) and use the FE1000 at my cabin sparingly keeping the bottom vent cover off. Coincidently, just a few days ago I decided to try pluging the "leaks" with a bunch of high-temp silicone and yesterdays test shows no more sawdust leaking out so maybe it will be ok now.
By the way, I would like to mention that I miss my FE1000 and prefer it over my replacement pellet grill even though my new one has WIFI connection which is truely nice when you need to leave your house near the end of long smokes. I won't mention the name of it but the name makes you think of "Yodeling"... The FE uses WAY less pellets, the heat is more consistant vertically on the indirect smoking side, it is better insulated for use in the winter w/o having to buy and extra blanket to cover it and is better for grilling as it has less of a unusable "hot spot" right over the can which my new one suffers from which just reduces what is already a small grilling area.
I wish there was a pellet grill that had a large direct grilling surface because I am finding what I really need and want is a smaller sized pure pellet-fed smoker to do a few racks or chickens in, and a pure pellet-fed grill with the fire pot(s) in the middle facilitating more than 5-6 burgers at a time (to my knowledge this last beast doesn't exist.)
Most likely I will be ulitmately buying a FE1000 again when I am fed up with the rust problems on my newer other brand grill