Have had a Weber Silver gas grill for several years, and I'm largely
pleased with it. Lately, the heat doesn't seem quite as intense. I can
put my hand over the grill for 7-8 seconds on hi. That's not a real
"sear" kind of heat. This is NOT the well known gas leak safety
throttle issue -- I get temps up to about 450F when closed. When I
look at the flame bars, the little flames coming out of the gas holes
(must be several hundred) are not uniform in length. Some are an inch
long, and some are a quarter of an inch long. That is to say, it looks
like the flame bar isn't shooting enough gas through many of the
little holes.

Well, OK, I take my pocketknife and jam it in one of the little gas
holes/slits, and I can make the quarter inch flame from that one turn
into an inch long flame. So ... it looks like these little buggers are
getting clogged up.

So is there a straightforward practice to cleaning these out? Um, the
pocketknife trick is not that convenient.

Looks to me like a small drill bit could make a major difference here.
Just make a bunch of bigger holes! But do I dare?

Is this a recognized issue for this kind of grill? Yeah, I'll try
alt.food.barbeque if I can't get an answer here.