Q1200 Modification


 
D

Dick Ross

New member
I bought a Q1200 last year and used it a few times. Wouldn't get hot enough. I could cook two hamburgers or a small steak, bu it took a while. Not much browning!

I bought some assorted mini drills on line for another project a while back. I picked the smallest drill I had that was bigger than the existing orifice on the Q1200. It measured .038" dia. with dial calipers. I removed the Orifice and drilled it out by hand. Holding the drill in some small vice grips. Replaced the orifice (with a little pipe dope). It works great. Maximum flame size looks to be about 50% bigger. Maximum Temperature is not excessively high. I can cook a full load of hamburgers or steak and the meat actually gets brown.

The drill size I picked was just a shot in the dark, but I got lucky.

Dick
 
Did you try and make sure things were working properly ? Was it used ? If new, why did you not contact weber ? For most, what you did hasn't been necessary.
 
The Q1200 without mods should and does get more than hot enough to do about anything. Drilling stuff out is not the answer to it not working correctly. Most likely you have a bad regulator or clogged burner just going around drilling away is a fools folly at best
 
I recently bought a Q1200, it gets to about 575 on high, on low it will hold right around 400.
Since you bought it last year and it has a 5 year warranty, give Weber a call to identify and repair/replace the issue before you make any modifications to it.
 
Done and working great

TOM BAUER said:
Sounds like the "modification" has been made already..
Click to expand...

Yes it's been done. according to my orifice chart, i now have a 10K burner instead of an 8.5K burner. I have not put a thermometer in it to see how hot it will get but it does well on hamburgers and steak. It's still a little big and awkward for what's supposed to be a portable for picnics, etc. (but it looks cool!!) I may get rid of the side shelves. they are not big enough to be very useful.

I am a tinkerer by trade. I will modify anything I can get my hands on. Ocasionally I will modify a perfectly good piece of equipment into a piece of junk. Sometimes I come up with something great. That happens often enough that I have made a pretty good living at it. This particular modification will likely not enhance my standard of living, but i took a marginally useful grill, and made it into a pretty good grill. Weber had their chance when they built it. I have no reason to think they could or would do any better if I gave them a second chance.


Dick
 
One thing weber has to worry about is liability. This can limit them to what they can and cannot do.
I find that my q220 will get above 550 if run for under 10 minutes. It grills and burns things as I choose. I do find that every so often I must clear the burner holes as they tend to carbon up and close due to this. I keep my grate clean and oiled so i would guess that it will last waaay beyond my lifetime. Other than that I have no further need to change anything. As to the tables I find them useful. I do support them with dowels or in my case, pieces of bamboo. I have seen a few instances of folks fitting wood on the tables. I assume as a cutting board or just esthetics.
 
I just bought a q1200 today and fired it up to burn off the crud on the grates. It heated up close to 500 and was rising but it was windy out so I put some tinfoil over the side vent to partially block them. The grill climed to 625 and sat there for about 20 minutes while the junk was burning off. That was without cleaning the burner tubes which looked like they were in need of attention, but that is for another day.
 
Sweet. Yea, at times I need to stop the side draft so I just use a piece of cardboard tucked beteeen the handle and the body. Seems to do the job.
 
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