Jon Tofte
TVWBB 1-Star Olympian
I am fortunate to have a beautiful old Genesis "Jr." that I got with the kind help of @Bruce and his sister in Minneapolis.
This was a one-owner, lightly used (for 35 years old!) grill that even had the original owner's guide. The guide had "Gensis XX Genesis XXI" on the cover. I couldn't really figure that out, and my attempts to research it found that name was used but with no explanation of when or why.
Bruce also made a big haul of old Weber parts including parts from another old "Jr." which he didn't want and was kind enough to give to me. Here they are prior to me starting to work on them:
It was interesting to me that this grill had a single center bottom brace rather than the front and back like my nice one above. I had thought that this one was even older, and that it was supposed to have wide horizontal wood slats on the bottom. That might be true, and member Mark Siebel did a stunning restoration of a very early "Jr." in this style:
Well, you may have noticed that we recently acquired a 1986 Weber catalog for our collection, thanks to the Weber Kettle Giants willingness to share. I just cropped the pictures they have and put them back into a catalog format. Now, they have uploaded a 1988 catalog for which I did the same thing. I just shared this with Chris, so pretty soon it should be available. But meanwhile, check out page 11 that provides some answers to this mystery. These grills were, in fact, originally marketed as "XX and XXI." The XX was the plain Jane version and, what do you know, it has the single support (and no thermometer):
Although the picture I showed above of the unfinished grill DOES have a thermometer holder, somehow when I got the parts together to take to the sandblaster, the one I took had a nicely finished "plug" rather than the thermometer holder. I am thinking what I actually have are the parts to make a Genesis XX. Notice in the write-up that this grill was so entry level that it had "a heavy bright nickel-plated cooking grill." I believe this was the only Genesis grill to have that low-end feature. If I eventually restore these parts as an "XX" I plan to cut down an average set of stainless rod grates to approximate the original - but still actually be USABLE!
So now we know that by 1988 there were these XX and XXI models. We don't know what they did in 1987. Was there just one XX then, and did it look like what Mark Siebel's did? We also know that by 1990 there was only one model that looked like the "XXI" but was called the "Jr." (see the 1990 catalog we have). What happened in 1989? Stay tuned. Hopefully, we will learn more.
This was a one-owner, lightly used (for 35 years old!) grill that even had the original owner's guide. The guide had "Gensis XX Genesis XXI" on the cover. I couldn't really figure that out, and my attempts to research it found that name was used but with no explanation of when or why.
Bruce also made a big haul of old Weber parts including parts from another old "Jr." which he didn't want and was kind enough to give to me. Here they are prior to me starting to work on them:
It was interesting to me that this grill had a single center bottom brace rather than the front and back like my nice one above. I had thought that this one was even older, and that it was supposed to have wide horizontal wood slats on the bottom. That might be true, and member Mark Siebel did a stunning restoration of a very early "Jr." in this style:
Well, you may have noticed that we recently acquired a 1986 Weber catalog for our collection, thanks to the Weber Kettle Giants willingness to share. I just cropped the pictures they have and put them back into a catalog format. Now, they have uploaded a 1988 catalog for which I did the same thing. I just shared this with Chris, so pretty soon it should be available. But meanwhile, check out page 11 that provides some answers to this mystery. These grills were, in fact, originally marketed as "XX and XXI." The XX was the plain Jane version and, what do you know, it has the single support (and no thermometer):
Although the picture I showed above of the unfinished grill DOES have a thermometer holder, somehow when I got the parts together to take to the sandblaster, the one I took had a nicely finished "plug" rather than the thermometer holder. I am thinking what I actually have are the parts to make a Genesis XX. Notice in the write-up that this grill was so entry level that it had "a heavy bright nickel-plated cooking grill." I believe this was the only Genesis grill to have that low-end feature. If I eventually restore these parts as an "XX" I plan to cut down an average set of stainless rod grates to approximate the original - but still actually be USABLE!
So now we know that by 1988 there were these XX and XXI models. We don't know what they did in 1987. Was there just one XX then, and did it look like what Mark Siebel's did? We also know that by 1990 there was only one model that looked like the "XXI" but was called the "Jr." (see the 1990 catalog we have). What happened in 1989? Stay tuned. Hopefully, we will learn more.
They did better with the Spirit name. But XX and XXI sound like placeholders or “real names obscured” rather than legitimate names.
