Last summer I was given an old bbq. It's a Charbroil 5-burner commercial infrared series. Was a pretty schweet bbq when it was new I'm sure. I managed to get one summer of use out of it but this year, well, that's another story



Rust, rust, and more rust. BUT, the body is good, the igniters all work, it's not the prettiest but the rest is functional. So I found a nice kit on Amazon for $33 which included all the gas tubes and heat plates. But of course it wasn't as easy as removing the old and installing the new. Screws were nolonger screws. They were blobs of rust. I had to grind away 15 rusted screws - 10 which held the igniters to the gas tubes, and the other 5 held the tubes to the brackets in back. Even after the screws were ground down I still had to very carefully separate each piece without destroying them. The metal bracket/hanger that spans across the front of the grill which holds the heat plates was toast. You can see in the picture that it's literally crumbling and falling apart and it's apparently not an item you can buy. What I did was took a piece of angle iron, used what was left of the old one as a template, cut some notches out, drilled some holes and screwed it into place. It worked great! Next I needed to find a way to reattach those gas tubes to those back brackets. I might have been able to drill some new holes and use metal screws but I didn't want to risk busting the brackets off as they are fairly flimsy. So I came up with THIS idea!



Binder clips! Heck yeah. Works like a charm.



She's back to full functionality now. Yeah sure, it's still got a lot of rust and a hole in it here and there but damnit, this thing will cook some meat! I see grills like this on the side of the road all over town. With a little TLC and about $40 you can have one too lol.

Nice work! It always feels good to rehab something and make it usable again.

i have attempted to bring life back to about 30 bbq's in my life time. about 30 of them were given away on CL for free

The way I see it, if I don't spend the big bucks on a brand new one, that's more money I can spend on guns and ammo!

I have the 2-burner version of your and love it! I will be needing to do this in a year or so though, so I am glad it's as easy as I hoped it would be.

It really wasn't too tough at all. A bit more effort than I was expecting but pretty easy still. A couple tips for ya: 1) hit the rusted together parts with some PB blaster or some sort of rust remover before hand. 2) the new gas tubes have threaded holes where you attach the ignitors but they don't come with the screws. I had to go to Lowe's to find the right size and that turned out to be M4-.7 threads. Just needs little shorties.

Good job, thanks for the info.
I have a Sears model that looks similar.
All the inverted V burner guards have holes in them, 2 of the burners as well.

Wenbt to Sears to buy replacement parts, all they had was a 'universal replacement'.

Just a heads up you're missing the diffusers (burner covers) that keep the gas holes from getting all clogged up. It looks like you removed the supports for these when you replaced the burners. Might want to look into getting something to cover those new burner bars or they won't remain functional for long.

Ah! You mean the things I referred to as "heat plates". That's what Amazon called em anyway. I have those installed, I just didn't have a picture to show but I just took a fresh one. I wanted to show what I meant about the angle iron too. So without further ado-

That's exactly what I meant, nice work! You've replaced all the wear parts aside from the grill plates themselves that look pretty good still. Should be a good BBQ for years to come!

got a grill here if you want to work your magic

Impressive work. You're a better man than I, I'd have bought a new one.