Oh boy, she’s a GTO now!
Many thanks to Larry for his sage advice on things this CPA doesn’t know much about such as propane fuel flow. In a previous thread I compared the Sunbeam LP gas orifice openings with those of the Broilmaster. After seeing the difference, it was easy to see why the Broilmaster burner I installed in my little Sunbeam wouldn’t light properly and produced a small flame with missing sections. As Larry noted right off the bat, the larger burner needed larger openings to allow adequate fuel flow. While it was nice in some ways that “The Judge” wasn’t running super hot, it was kind of disappointing, and much more ominously, it was scary to light given that sometimes the flame would go out while fuel was still coming out.
My maintenance director is an old tool and die guy. A while back, our organization received the opportunity for a bargain purchase of a whole tool shed of classic tool and die equipment, so he was able to come up with exactly what was needed to enlarge the Sunbeam orifices to the size of the Broilmaster ones. I put it all back together and the results were pretty dramatic. The burner now cranks like in a Broilmaster grill:
So now I really do have the “muscle grill” I theorized about. I plan to do another shakedown cruise and see how hot the firebox gets after a half hour and an hour. I have a feeling this grill will, in fact, take careful, responsibile use

. At least it lights up readily and consistently now

!