Resto complete. Now, maintenance for long life?

[Jim Weber]

When I first got my Spirit 500 I would cook salmon fillets on it --- flesh side down first and then finish on the skin side - it would always stick to the grates so I would just scrape the meat right off..... Of course on the next cook I would crank it up to 600+ and burn the skin and then just scrape it down into the box...... Yeah, I was stoopid back then ---- but I never let it build up to the levels I've seen in 'freebies'.

 

[Bruce]

Fine to do stuff like that if you are willing to scrape the cook box pull the drip pan out once in a while and scrape it out. It is when neither is done for three to 20 years that the problems arise.

 

[Tim Campbell]

This was the tray before I restored my daily driver (a free Silver C from Craig's list). If this thing had ever lit off it would have burned for two months. It actually cleaned up really nice.

Makes me feel a lot better about mine.