Nonnymus wrote:

> 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.

That's good information. I've torn mine apart to clean it but I
replaced the burner rather than trying to open the holes and clean it
out. If it takes a half a day I would rather drop in a new one any way.

It seems that my last three Webers all burned hotter in the right - rear
corner of the grill even new out of the box. It is the closest side to
the gas but I still can't figure out why it's hotter in the back.

Dan