Summary:
Condition: The thing was obviously really dirty. Lots of caked up grease and grime on the grates, sides, lid, everywhere. Burner 3 from right would shoot out flames at me. Burner 4 from right was very hard to light. The ceramic flavorizer/heat distribution bricks had mostly disintegrated, and tons of it had fallen through to the bottom. The cast stainless steel burners were heavily covered with surface rust but otherwise in good shape. The igniters/gas collector boxes were completely rusted through and had broken off and fallen into the basin. The carryover tubes at the back were badly rusted but only one was completely broken. The knobs were corroded and the inserts were all melted and misshapen from the heat, so they didn't really work for turning the D-type valves.
Steps:
I took it all apart so I could clean it. First I tried to wash the grates with degreasing soap and water, that did nothing. Power-washing helped a little. But really, the only real progress occurred after I took the angle grinder with a wire cup wheel to it.
I also used the angle grinder and wire cup to clean all the rust off the stainless steel burners, that was really rewarding. All of the holes were fine, but after washing with vinegar and grinding the rust off, I went back and blew it all out with pressurized air.
The old knobs were shot, I ordered inexpensive replacement knobs to replace them.
Two valves were shot, I pulled both and took them apart to inspect them and one was really sticky, the other had some broken bits inside. Bought two new ones to replace-- they're almost identical except they're built upside down, odd but liveable.
I replaced all three igniter/gas collectors and I replaced the electric automatic igniter switch. None of that had EVER worked since we bought the house, now it's all like new.
The rear gas carryover tubes are in rough, rusted out shape, but only one was completely broken. I confirmed the others still work, and I'm having a buddy who works at a metal fab shop make up a new one for me to replace the last one. The new igniter/collectors also act as carryover tubes at the front, so everything works basically as designed, until I can get that new fabbed piece in there.
I replaced the flavorizer/heat dissipator ceramic bricks, with the new style ceramic plates that the newest version of my grill uses.
That all makes it sound easy but so much of the grill pieces were assembled with stainless steel screws and bolts and nuts and washers, and they were all thoroughly rusted into place. I spent a lot of time with the angle grinder cutoff wheel just sawing through stainless steel, and a lot of time with the Dremel tool and diamond cutoff wheels for the smaller more hard-to-reach places. Every single burner had to have the rusted-out bolts cut off, all three igniters had left rusted trim pieces bolted to the side, etc. It took a lot of time.
Total cost for materials came to just over $200. As discussed in this thread above, the cheapest whole drop-in replacement I could find, would have been $700 uninstalled. And the actual direct replacement for my exact grill, would have been around $4,000 uninstalled. This unit has extremely heavy duty cast stainless steel burners and the rest of it is very well built, so I'm pretty happy I went and rehabbed instead of buying a cheaper new one.
For anyone interested, I tried a dozen different ways to clean the stainless-- Barkeepers Friend, is definitely your friend.
