Willard
TVWBB Fan
I just found this site last night. I should say, I found my TRIBE last night and I love it. Let me explain:
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A month ago I moved from an apartment in New York City to a house on half an acre in Westchester County. I always wanted to grill and we rarely go out to eat as we eat 99% of our meals at home. We had donated and grabbed things from Craigslist before. A week after we moved, we picked up a Non-Weber grill which was gas but fell on hard times and the owner used it with charcoal. Charcoal didn't work for us as we were newbies at grilling and getting the charcoal to a good place took forever. With two little kids, we needed to be up and running faster so we moved to gas. Our neighbor gave us another Non-Weber gas grill which was mostly working but needed repairs. I started watching YouTube videos and the name Weber kept coming up over and over. I decided to just ditch the first two faulty and flimsy Non-Webers and drove to Central New Jersey where we found a Spirit II 210 in excellent condition. It was a condominium complex where grills were prohibited but most people had one. A problem brought the Fire Department and along with the Condo Management, they threatened fines of $5000 to those who insisted on keeping them. I'm mentioning that story because they guy I bought it from explained that most people just threw their grills away. There were over 200 apartments, the idea that half of those threw away their grills at once is just overwhelming to me. He said there were piles upon piles of all kinds of grills.
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Anyway, I paid $200 (with cover) and we brought it home where I gave it a thorough cleaning. By then, I had learned about using a putty knife and using degreasers on the cookbox but not on the grates. The finished product looked like it had just arrived from the store. I felt super proud as I had never done anything like this. A week later, while driving around our new suburban neighborhood, I found an older Spirit 310. It needed TLC but I could see that these were even more sturdy than the Spirit II I had just purchased. I loaded it on my SUV and drove home slowly with the trunk lid open. I completely took it apart, cleaned and had it working in a couple of days. It cooked just as good as the Spirit II, if not better. I prefer and drive older cars and I prefer older appliances given their better quality, so I was partial to this older grill. The bottom frame of that older 310 had rusted out so bad that a whole wheel came off. I had to use a piece of wood (4x4) to prevent it from falling over.
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A week ago, someone posted a free identical grill 48 miles from me. I contacted the owner right away and drove to pick it up in the suburbs of Connecticut. The bottom of the case was flawless, no rust. A barely used cover was included with this free grill. You guessed it, I ended up taking the best of both 310 grills and made one. The lesser of the two I posted on Craigslist and gave away.
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I'm now looking at buying (or picking up) an older Genesis so I could have something slightly bigger for when we host larger groups. I also like fixing older grills and giving them away to family and friends.
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This is a long way of saying that I truly enjoy restoring Weber grills and that I'm glad I found this site.
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At one point and while living in Manhattan, I owned 11 bicycles; I'm now down to 5. One rhetorical question lingers: how many grills are enough? and what are the right ones one should own?
.
A month ago I moved from an apartment in New York City to a house on half an acre in Westchester County. I always wanted to grill and we rarely go out to eat as we eat 99% of our meals at home. We had donated and grabbed things from Craigslist before. A week after we moved, we picked up a Non-Weber grill which was gas but fell on hard times and the owner used it with charcoal. Charcoal didn't work for us as we were newbies at grilling and getting the charcoal to a good place took forever. With two little kids, we needed to be up and running faster so we moved to gas. Our neighbor gave us another Non-Weber gas grill which was mostly working but needed repairs. I started watching YouTube videos and the name Weber kept coming up over and over. I decided to just ditch the first two faulty and flimsy Non-Webers and drove to Central New Jersey where we found a Spirit II 210 in excellent condition. It was a condominium complex where grills were prohibited but most people had one. A problem brought the Fire Department and along with the Condo Management, they threatened fines of $5000 to those who insisted on keeping them. I'm mentioning that story because they guy I bought it from explained that most people just threw their grills away. There were over 200 apartments, the idea that half of those threw away their grills at once is just overwhelming to me. He said there were piles upon piles of all kinds of grills.
.
Anyway, I paid $200 (with cover) and we brought it home where I gave it a thorough cleaning. By then, I had learned about using a putty knife and using degreasers on the cookbox but not on the grates. The finished product looked like it had just arrived from the store. I felt super proud as I had never done anything like this. A week later, while driving around our new suburban neighborhood, I found an older Spirit 310. It needed TLC but I could see that these were even more sturdy than the Spirit II I had just purchased. I loaded it on my SUV and drove home slowly with the trunk lid open. I completely took it apart, cleaned and had it working in a couple of days. It cooked just as good as the Spirit II, if not better. I prefer and drive older cars and I prefer older appliances given their better quality, so I was partial to this older grill. The bottom frame of that older 310 had rusted out so bad that a whole wheel came off. I had to use a piece of wood (4x4) to prevent it from falling over.
.
A week ago, someone posted a free identical grill 48 miles from me. I contacted the owner right away and drove to pick it up in the suburbs of Connecticut. The bottom of the case was flawless, no rust. A barely used cover was included with this free grill. You guessed it, I ended up taking the best of both 310 grills and made one. The lesser of the two I posted on Craigslist and gave away.
.
I'm now looking at buying (or picking up) an older Genesis so I could have something slightly bigger for when we host larger groups. I also like fixing older grills and giving them away to family and friends.
.
This is a long way of saying that I truly enjoy restoring Weber grills and that I'm glad I found this site.
.
At one point and while living in Manhattan, I owned 11 bicycles; I'm now down to 5. One rhetorical question lingers: how many grills are enough? and what are the right ones one should own?
! I personally like the older grills myself like the Genesis 1000-5000 series or the Silvers/Golds/Platinums. I also prefer the EW layout as opposed to NS because I like to do roti cooking.
And you may even open your eyes to other products you may find even more intriguing than Weber. Like our other discussion on a Wolf
