Resurrecting the Grill

Resurrecting the grill is an adventure into the world of "man made crap". Today, I took that adventure and true to my theory of "man made crap" the adventure was painful, annoying, expensive and unable to be completed in a single day.

Man made crap is what I assign to things that are severely flawed in their design, requiring unbelievable time, attention, and resources to make work with the bottom line being, if more thought had gone into the original, man made design...I would not be wasting my time right now.

A once beautiful, shiny stainless steel grill is now a shadow of its former self. The grilling grates have rusted through and literally split. The three iron burners have rusted so badly that literally all that remains is dust.

Rust dust.

Who did we entertain last and might they have noticed the shame in this grill?

How toxic is rust?

I started pulling whole pieces of refuge out of the grill. Burner parts, grate parts, chicken parts...

I got to the bottom of the grill, trying to contain the fierce mess with a trash can by my side and I discovered a "bar". This "bar" ran from one side of the grill to the other and apparently, in its glory days, supported three burners for proper air circulation.

This bar was attached with screws...

Screws that had rusted to the side of the grill,

With a rusted nut attached.

Securely rusted for all eternity.

With garden gloves on and eye protection, (because I remember one time my dad got a piece of metal in his eye and we spent HOURS in the emergency room over the rust in his eye...probably another adventure in man made crap decades ago...)

I started pulling, no give. I got the screw driver, nowhere to torque it. Completely rusted through. And now the relay starts. The relay is to the garage and back, with a different tool in tow each time.

I brought back my dremel, battery not charged, can't find charger. Back to the garage.

I brought back my drill, attached dremel parts and tried to cut the screws, won't reach.

I brought back a file I found. File won't file. Back to the garage.

Cussing like a sailor, swearing the man made crap, I pull some more.

One side of the bar broke loose!!!! Free at last! Free at last!

This is probably the best time to tell you I have "smarty pants dance"...and now I'm doing the smarty pants dance...

Why would any "one" design any replacement part with an attachment that is exposed to water and humidity out of a metal that rusts? Why? Why not pay attention and make that particular screw galvanized? We humans have a metal coating that is strong and does not rust and it is called galvanized! Use it!

I went to lunch...my lunch date was my friend Anita who was a college roommate of mine and I hadn't seen her in 16 years!

I stopped at the "warehouse" on the way home, had a discussion with a guy in the tool department. We mourned my dremel together, because he had a perfect part I could've used for my dremel to cut that last rusted screw out. He recommended I used my jig saw, attach a metal blade and cut the screw out. So for only $4.24 in jig saw blades, I was on my way.

Back to the relay, got the jig saw, battery, and charger. Set up to charge since the stupid thing is cordless and takes 24 hours to charge for 5 minutes of sawing battery juice. Another man made piece of crap.

I set to cleaning up the rest of the grill, giving it a good scrubbing to prep it for all the new shiny grill parts I was going to install. Dreaming of the first cheeseburger, and first BBQ of the season, who should we have over? Hmmmm.....

A few hours later, I prematurely put the jig saw together. I knew I didn't have much charge on the battery, probably 30 seconds of sawing, so I took position and set to the screw. Like predicted, I only got 30 seconds of good jig saw before the battery died. I had no patience for this.

I relayed back to the garage, grabbed the drill, loaded a drill bit. Pulled the grill over to the closest outlet and laid the drill into the phillips head end of the rusted screw as hard and as fast as I could.

I beat the screw up pretty bad, gave a few pulls on the remainder of the bar and it broke free!

Free! Free!

Smarty pants dance here.......

Now, I started the deciphering the cryptic scrawl of the replacement parts printed instructions...Really...they couldn't do any better than these instructions? Man made crap.

I get the bar completely assembled and I work on attaching the replacement to the grill. Except. Wait a minute. Hold up. There's no replacement screw to hold the replacement bar? You've GOT to be kidding me. Unbelievable.

Man made piece of crap.

That's okay, I'm going out tomorrow and buying two galvanized screws and two galvanized nuts...

Me woman.

Smarty pants dance.

;-)

Materials: $254.24 so far.
Check out http://www.grillparts.com/