I have a Sam's Club SS 3-burner grill that operates on natural gas.
It's 4 years old and is used almost daily for cooking. The three
burners are H-shaped cast iron, and above them are flat ceramic plates
for "flame taming." The grill was and is an excellent value and has
served me well. However, over the past year or so, I began to notice
that the grill didn't seem to heat up as quickly as I remembered and it
took longer to grill a chop or about anything else for that matter. I
also noticed that the "sweet spots" I had identified was being hotter or
cooler than other spots were changed, had moved or were non existent
anymore.

With that in mind, I decided it was time for some exploratory surgery
and a darned good cleaning. My first step was the old faithful trick of
covering the bar grates with heavy duty aluminum foil and running the
three burners on high for 30-45 minutes. The foil concentrates and
reflects the heat back downward, turning any food and charred things to
a gray ash. This was then vacuumed away and the grates and flame tamers
removed. I wire brushed the tub interior and vacuumed everything that
came loose and hadn't been reduced already to ash. The three burners
were held in place with pins that extended through a bracket (probably
for shipping), and were removed with wire cutters. When I lifted the
first burner out, I immediately found what I'd suspected: about 2/3 of
the holes in the sides of the burner were clogged, plugged or
obstructed. Presumably, this was from drippings that made it through
the flame tamers and hit just right on the burner, from the manufacturer
not getting all the casting sand out or from the cast iron corroding and
swelling.

I took the three burners to my shop and measured the holes in the least
used and least obstructed one. Then, I chucked a drill bit in my DeWalt
drill, rolled up a comfortable chair, put on my safety goggles and
started drilling out the holes. My god, are there a lot of holes and
some are very difficult to reach. Those, got a hand "picking" with a
piece of wire. The completed burners were then taken out back and blown
out with 175 psi compressed air until they were clean as a whistle inside.

I reassembled the grill and can report that it's working perfectly. In
all, I used up about a half day, and the result was a grill that has a
more even temperature now across the grates than I recall having when it
was new. I attribute that to having round, perfectly formed holes in
the burners, now, rather than "dents" created by just casting the holes.

If your old grill is acting like mine was, I really recommend investing
some time and giving my solution a try.
--
---Nonnymus---

TINSTAAFL
There Is No Such Thing
As A Free Lunch