Cleaning 1998 Burner Tubes


 
Here’s my angle grinder injury from yesterday morning. 2nd degree burn from trying to cut-off wheel my dog’s plastic bone chew toy. It shot back a glob of molten plastic onto my hand.

Yes, the gloves were right next to me.
Yes I should have used a hacksaw.

After 30 seconds:

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After 12 hours:

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After 36 hours:
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This is where that tube will fail, along where it is pinched/welded at the end or around the first inch of the tube itself. The rest of it does look good though.

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John-NY said:
Here is the little flame spewing from that crack

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Yeah, but you gotta be real careful about that. If that hole should open up a bit more, you have what amounts to a blowtorch flame directed at the side of your cookbox. Too much of that will melt a hole in the aluminum. Better to replace the burner now than scrap a cookbox.

Looking at your picture, you might be there already. Good luck!
 
Ed P said:
Yeah, but you gotta be real careful about that. If that hole should open up a bit more, you have what amounts to a blowtorch flame directed at the side of your cookbox. Too much of that will melt a hole in the aluminum. Better to replace the burner now than scrap a cookbox.

Looking at your picture, you might be there already. Good luck!
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I've seen a couple cook boxes that were degraded in that area, no doubt from a bad burner tube. It is time to replace those, but who are we to judge?
 
Sounds like a very good reason to keep an eye on your burners and replace them when needed. I hadn't thought about the potential damage to the Cook box. Thank you for pointing that out.
 
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If you happen to have an IR gun (or a thermal imager!), walk around your grill sometime when it's been running for a while. The end with the crossover tube runs hotter because of the lit crossover tube...makes sense, right? You really don't want any more heat on that end from a blown out burner tube.
 
Ed P said:
Yeah, but you gotta be real careful about that. If that hole should open up a bit more, you have what amounts to a blowtorch flame directed at the side of your cookbox. Too much of that will melt a hole in the aluminum. Better to replace the burner now than scrap a cookbox.

Looking at your picture, you might be there already. Good luck!
Click to expand...
I've seen a couple cook boxes that were degraded in that area, no doubt from a bad burner tube. It is time to replace those, but who are we to judge
Josh Dekubber said:
Sounds like a very good reason to keep an eye on your burners and replace them when needed. I hadn't thought about the potential damage to the Cook box. Thank you for pointing that out.
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I've seen a lot of cook box damage on these old grills unfortunately. It's almost always a result of neglect on the part of the original owner. As good as these grills were made, they can't withstand the abuse of clueless owners forever.
 
Steve Hoch said:
I've seen a couple cook boxes that were degraded in that area, no doubt from a bad burner tube. It is time to replace those, but who are we to judge?
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Thanks, these are in a 3000 I picked up free a couple weeks ago. I’ll make sure to replace it when I get around to restoring it.
 
I think I have a full set of those burners in good shape plus the XOver for it as well. I can look tomorrow. No use for them here now
 
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