HL Smoker OEM replacement questions (Polarity & cotton)

[KernelClinq]

Long story short, I burned up my first smoker taking the caution to not flood it too seriously. OEM replacement smoker ($6) got put in, and it works, but not as well as the original, so I dug in, and opened the smokebox. Three questions:

First, does polarity matter for the blower? In the photo, the yellow plug in CN12 seems to have red and black reversed when compared to others on the TK 7.0 MFU.

Second, does the cotton inside need to be packed tightly, very fluffy, or "somewhere in between", leaning toward one or the other?

Finally, is the gasket supposed to be oriented one way in particular? Put back together, it smokes from around the sides almost as much as from the tailpipes.

CN12 - connector polarity reversed?

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cotton too tight or too fluffy?

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leaky smokebox

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