Finished my Silver B refurb


 

DaveF in IL

TVWBB Member
Backstory on this is that I found this forum while researching a new Weber grill to replace my rusting-out Vermont Castings. I was concerned about the quality of the new Webers I was seeing in stores so I was looking for some reviews. I stumbled on some of the restoration threads and liked both the looks of the older grills as well as the apparent quality. Seeing those reminded me that when we moved into our house, the previous owner had left an old grill behind. I had stashed it around the corner on the deck and forgotten about it mostly. I knew it was a Weber, but it looked old so until this point I hadn't considered using it - I had only thought about how I might dispose of it someday.

Anyway, seeing those nice restorations, I went out and yanked the cover off and discovered a Silver B from 2002 with the left and right fold-out side table. And, it looked to be in decent shape! Armed with the tons of useful information here, I set out to fix it up to get to a state where I'd enjoy using it. I pulled it completely apart, removing everything except the burner tube alignment bolts and the bolts through the cookbox for the manifold (again, lots of great advice here to leave those alone). Painted the frame, lid sides, and cookbox, cleaned up the thermoset pieces, bought a bunch of new bolts and various other parts and put it all back together. It's not 100% perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it. If I had more free time it might have been nice to try to do a "factory new condition" type restore, but there's too many other projects on the list plus I really just wanted to start using it. Also, I'm sure even with a perfect restore it'll not look as nice after a bit of use anyway. I'm still jealous of some of those here though who have done it! I think the only major thing I would have done differently at this point is to use the semi-gloss on the cookbox. I used flat on the cookbox and semi on the sides. Someday I'll probably pull it apart again and apply the semi-gloss to the cookbox as the flat just looks a bit gray/chalky to me.

Here's some pics after I uncovered it:

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And here it is all cleaned up and back together:



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As you can see I'm missing the bottom shelf. Some tools had been left on it and it rusted. I'm contemplating making a shelf out of wood to replace it, otherwise I may look for a parts grill. I'm also thinking about converting to natural gas, so maybe I'll find a NG one and take the best parts from both.

Thanks to everyone here for posting such great information, both calling attention to the value of these older grills as well as all the details and steps to get them fixed up. It's been a fun project!
 
Wow, great job! You now have a grill that you will enjoy for years to come, especially because you have some effort invested in it. Congrats, it's a beauty! And to think for all this time it's been sitting there ignored!
 
That came out great! Did you use regular spray paint? It looks professionally painted.
Thanks! I didn't do anything special - I just used Rust Oleum high temp, semi-gloss for the lid sides and frame and flat for the cookbox. I actually goofed up and painted the whole frame with the high-temp paint - i meant to use the regular Rust Oleum on the frame parts further away from the cookbox but forgot.

For prep, on the lid sides and cookbox I just scraped off any loose paint and used a hand-held wire brush. For the frame, I painted it primarily to stop the rust where the cookbox attaches, which had heavy surface rust but hadn't deteriorated the structure too much. I wet-sanded the whole frame and then painted with 3 or so light coats of the high-temp paint. The cookbox and lid sides got 4-5 light coats.

In person you can see the spots where the previous paint flaked off the sides as those spots do not have the texture that the rest has. A little annoying, but short of stripping the sides and removing all the texture I couldn't think of any other options. The cookbox has some spots that had to be scraped and brushed more than others, and you can see those if you look closely too. Oh well.

Yep, excellent job. Even better since it was a first try. I just finished my latest rehab, also a Silver B.

https://madison.craigslist.org/for/d/weber-genesis-silver-redhead/6641696666.html

That's a really nice job there. Impressive. It's really amazing how well these models clean up - it definitely speaks to how well they were built to begin with. Parts availability is a huge part of it too of course.
 
Yah, I have done the same thing with the Rusto High Heat paint by forgetting and painting stuff that didn't need it. It costs about double the regular Rusto 2x paint, but no big deal, they both look good.
 
I have never "added" the extra drop down table. Some Silver B's have it from the factory, some dont. I don't know about the Silver C's. But if some are made with the extra right side swing table, it would most likely be under the burner, rather than under the control panel. If you wanted to add the right side swing table to a Silver C that didn't already have one, you would need a shelf end cap that had the hold for the pivot rod. You would need to drill a hole in the frame for the other end of the rod (if it doesn't already exist). But most important, you would need the latch on the frame leg where it latches into the frame to stay up.

I just think the right side table balances out the look of the grill nicely as well.
 

 

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