Gas to charcoal grill

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hambone1950

Master of the Pit
Original poster
Jul 23, 2012
1,400
46
Metrowest Boston , ma.
I always liked my kenmore gas grill. I've had it for ....I bet 15 years. Cast iron burners , roomy side tables....I liked the green enamel lid too. .........Anyhow.....it finally got burned out.

http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...f5105fedc7ce533bc6c177b313da3_zps0009ab74.jpg

But I got to thinking....I bet you could turn this into a charcoal grill pretty easily. So I got to work.
Tore the insides out....the burners were still good , but the support rails were all burned up.
http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...ff737ad5bbf2c927c86ce708991bc_zpsd08e1a4f.jpghttp://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...83f300df6854a2c059213a5f2c3e5_zps86489b85.jpghttp://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...da73cd3520bf716203e74a9005e9b_zpsae8fb8fa.jpg

The burner shields were still viable so I thought I could just put those back and use them for the bed of the grill to lay charcoal on....but in their normal position , they would put the charcoal much too close to the cooking grids.....not good. http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...12829ee17a0e1593e37663bd99baa_zpsa7fc0662.jpg
Sooooo..... After some head scratching. I decided to turn the shields sideways and overlap them... voila! They fit down lower and fill up the bottom of the grill and provide a nice ventilated bed for the charcoal! http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...0e94296c16695004a5188cd7057bf_zps190e4db0.jpg

So I scrounged around the garage and came up with a half bag of old match light left from my pre forum days......poured it in and smoothed it out....put all the cooking grates back in and got set to burn off all the crusty old gunk.http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...6b130edf59e957ba6a99fbb77a936_zps4bf53ebc.jpg
And let me tell ya , that fire roared pretty good for a while burning all the accumulated grease from the inside of that grill....made me nervous that I might get a visit from the fire dept! But no nervous neighbors called and I sprinkled a little water to cool things down and after a while the fire settled down to a nice even HOT. Fire
http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...a6df3690e914fa8c291a69e92a699_zps088baba2.jpg. Now I wished I had a spatchcocked chicken to throw on there , but I had no idea it would work this well!
I did heat up some leftover ribs for lunch so it wasn't a total waste.....http://s1265.photobucket.com/albums...f3e278326bc62323c627d397db592_zpsaa590340.jpgthis grill in its present incarnation wouldn't be good for everything , but you could surely fire up a bunch of burgers and dogs or a mess of chicken wings.......and with a half load of charcoal you could set it up for indirect cooking. Well it makes me a little happy to think that it doesn't have to go to the junkyard for a while longer and I'll have some fun with it as a charcoal grill. Have a good weekend everybody
 
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