Hello all.......hope everyone is doing well. It is freezing cold here in Va but I am still slowly.....very slowly making progress on an old school red top....I am terrible with model names and numbers......this thing is oldddddddd so I will call it a Genesis 5 bar with split bottom grid shelf if that helps u identify it.....by shelf I mean down by the wheels.
Anyway I bought this grill for $15 as I recall because I saw the RCplane sp? grates on it in the ad.......I couldnt get their fast enough .....In the end I decided to resto the grill but keep the grates for myself. Now the problem was that the drip trey rails were a mess.....one stud was broken off completely and the other three just had rusted nubs where the screw heads used to be. Now I have had close to zero luck drilling out any hardened steel bolt or screw and I have battles several on these Webers. I end up breaking drill bits and then u cant drill through a broken drill bit. So this is what I have done so far with this cook box. I took my grinder and just grinded right through the rusted screw and took the mounting stud down more and more until the remains of the mounting screw were no longer visible. So basically I removed about half of each stud....and the last stud was completely broken off anyway. So now I was only battling aluminum which I drilled through easily. I drilled each stud all the way through the cook box. My plan is to just insert a bolt through the cook box and extend through a spacer that I will fabricate to the correct stud height.....and then attach the rails with a nut. I will have to grind a little angle on both inside and outside for nice clean fit but that will be no problem. My thought is that a grill is not a air tight sealed system...I mean the drip trey itself is 1/2 " hanging below the cook box......so certainly drilling through the cook box will have zero effect on the machine. I think it will be much stronger in the end.
Has anyone had success drilling out cook box screws or the frame bolt???? If so please tell me your method. I have seen Bruch use the punch out technique on the frame bolt which I have tried w no success ( yet ) ....just gotta get the balls to hit it harder.
Has anyone else drilled out their cook box studs like I did with this one?
I will follow with pics soon
Anyway I bought this grill for $15 as I recall because I saw the RCplane sp? grates on it in the ad.......I couldnt get their fast enough .....In the end I decided to resto the grill but keep the grates for myself. Now the problem was that the drip trey rails were a mess.....one stud was broken off completely and the other three just had rusted nubs where the screw heads used to be. Now I have had close to zero luck drilling out any hardened steel bolt or screw and I have battles several on these Webers. I end up breaking drill bits and then u cant drill through a broken drill bit. So this is what I have done so far with this cook box. I took my grinder and just grinded right through the rusted screw and took the mounting stud down more and more until the remains of the mounting screw were no longer visible. So basically I removed about half of each stud....and the last stud was completely broken off anyway. So now I was only battling aluminum which I drilled through easily. I drilled each stud all the way through the cook box. My plan is to just insert a bolt through the cook box and extend through a spacer that I will fabricate to the correct stud height.....and then attach the rails with a nut. I will have to grind a little angle on both inside and outside for nice clean fit but that will be no problem. My thought is that a grill is not a air tight sealed system...I mean the drip trey itself is 1/2 " hanging below the cook box......so certainly drilling through the cook box will have zero effect on the machine. I think it will be much stronger in the end.
Has anyone had success drilling out cook box screws or the frame bolt???? If so please tell me your method. I have seen Bruch use the punch out technique on the frame bolt which I have tried w no success ( yet ) ....just gotta get the balls to hit it harder.
Has anyone else drilled out their cook box studs like I did with this one?
I will follow with pics soon