I have not changed the heat deflectors on mine but did upgrade two of them to the 1 piece drip pan. Much stouter but they both needed to be adjusted at the left end, facing the grill. They were making contact with the temperature sensor. The first picture shows that and was taken prior to me adjusting it. I used sheet metal hand folds to very gently bend the rails down and works great. Much heavier and 1/8" thick. Appears to be a great improvement, time will tell.

Here's what I did. Love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJH0sMr0_lw&t=9s

Thanks for sharing.  I will try this sometime

I just wrap about 4-5 layers of aluminum foil on the bottom SS tray and cleaning is pretty quick and simple! Just take off a layer of foil after about 4-5 cooks and you get the same effect if it was a solid tray.

My original grease pan was the old easy warp one from 2009/2010 era.  When they came out with the much more stout heavy duty ones a few years later, I got one of them.  When the SS open Flame became available, I upgraded once again.  I never really had any temp issues, it was just a pain in the xxx to clean, so about 6 months ago, I put the Heavy duty one back in, and there it remains.

I was not aware of the cleaning issues with the " SS open flame" design.

BTW, In my open flame design shown in the youtube video, for ribs and such, I just put the original GMG set up back in. Easy.

I think the issue is the two pieces tend to warp because they are thinner.  The one piece is heavier and less prone to warp.  If you get the new heat shield, it's really designed to be run with the newer firmware which changes how the fan pulses.  Also with the new firmware you can tell the grill whether icy, cold, average, warm, or hot outside and it will adjust pellet feed and fan speed.  Should help with summer temps when the grill tends to overshoot.  Especially if you want to smoke at 175-180 before bumping it up.  I still find the grill finicky but now with a straight drip pan I might be able to dial it in.  There are also some mods where you drill a hole in the grill and attach a rod to the SS heat shield so you can move it mid cook.