Episode: 3225
Title: HPR3225: Grill repair
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3225/hpr3225.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:08:54

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,225 for Friday 11 December 2020. Today's show is entitled
Grill Repair. It is hosted by Operator
and is about 17 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
I go over some grill tips, Repair.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code
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Music
Hello everyone and welcome to
a quick tip for maybe a quick episode.
It's about grills.
So if you have a grill and you're one of those people that advise the grill every 3-5 years,
this probably should work for you.
I got a grill 10-11 years ago for anniversary
and for my uncle in 5 years down the road,
I covered it and treated it nice and all that stuff.
We don't use it a whole ton.
But after about 5 years,
what happens is over time
and he's worst at saying the damage is he's been at the atmosphere.
The damage is stuff.
He agrees, he gets the heat, he gets the grease,
and they have fight and they get put a little in the watching.
Your primary objective is to protect the line.
We're on the roofing team, definitely on the roofing team.
All the ways to the holes coming out of the grill.
If you can do that, nothing else really matters.
The bottom rusts out, the sides rust out, the upside down rust out.
This is something with the coldest one to screw in.
When you start talking about screws
over the course of 10 years sitting outside,
they dig rust and they become pretty much pointless and useless.
After a certain amount of time,
safety starts to become an issue,
because you don't want elements falling down from the bottom.
If you have a wooden deck, obviously,
or even works plastic,
I'm sure there's plastic stuff as mine would be better than wood,
but from a safety heat perspective.
Anyway, so if your bottom is rusted out,
it's not the biggest deal.
Mine starts to kind of move,
prefer a little bit more in some holes here and there.
I don't know how effective it is to actually clean the grill itself.
I haven't really done any research to figure out,
hey, is it better to clean your grill,
pick and span, and then have the elements
attack at nice new, shangy metal?
Or is it better to just let them let it eat itself
and let the stuff kick on in like a few days, right?
So my thing was,
about five years after I got this grill,
it's a relatively normal Kenmore
and you know,
it's fucking Chinese-yum shit now.
That's the problem is that they don't make
grills like they used to,
it's all this shit,
and you can get it.
I'm sure you can probably get some fancy
ceramic, whatever,
if that's not what this is about.
This is your average Joe clown,
like me, he divides the grill as a gift,
and you know,
I don't want to be one of those people
that throws the grill outside in the front line,
because I don't know how to fix it,
and I don't want to spend,
I want to spend another $300 on a grill
at three years, which is just the phosphorus to me.
So anyways,
I replaced what they call the firewall,
which is the part that protects,
it's pretty important.
The firewall protects the gas line,
I'm making all this shit up as I go along.
The firewall,
what I'm assuming,
protects the gas line
from basically
running up through the side
and rusting out,
and it's just something
catching fire through the actual gas line.
So you want to protect the gas line
and you want to protect everything
leading up to the elements
under the thing.
So I replaced the firewall
because it started rusting out.
It's starting to exhibit some signs
of rust,
and so we got another like three or four.
I can already see a hole through it,
where I'm not supposed to see a hole through the firewall here.
So the firewall is probably going to have to be your place again,
along with these three little things
that protect the heating elements.
So there's these three little track hod,
little tent-looking things,
and I'll go over why I actually fixed mine,
and I didn't have to spend a dime.
But there's these little,
tents that go over the heating elements
to protect them from getting rusted out,
quicker than normal,
because to get grease on something,
and then you get heat on something,
then it just kind of starts heating away at itself.
These actually look relatively decent.
I replaced them.
I probably could have waited another while before I did.
I'm putting this one back in
and one of the little pabbies
is completely rusted off.
It's not exactly all there,
but it's serving its purpose, right?
My heating elements are being protected by these little tents.
I replaced the little grill covers
because the grills were starting to actually,
the grill grills.
It's three pieces,
and you can modulate the pull them out.
So if you're just cooking something,
you can pull one out and take it in.
Which is actually nice,
instead of having to clean the whole grill,
you just clean the bits and pieces of it.
Anyways,
I replaced those
and like I said,
for five years,
and I usually,
you want to get two pro paintings,
because the last thing you want to do
is go outside,
start cooking,
or usually it's already dead before you start cooking.
And you have to rank around to the store
or just say,
forget it,
I just want to make a reason.
I'm not going to have to figure something out
to do something else to do with this mean.
So you want to have two pro paintings,
definitely,
as it has a backup.
And if you can,
there's something else to add to my father added to it.
I think to tell
like an auto shutoff
or some kind of pressure gauge
or something which I haven't needed.
I don't know what he had.
He had some kind of fancy doodle
that's connected to the pro painting
to either check the pressure
or do something.
Anyways,
I don't remember
how to remove what that was.
I'll put a note,
show you what it's called,
I'm actually putting the grill back together now
after kind of tormenting it.
Quite a bit here.
So you want two pro paintings,
because obviously you don't want to eat
in the middle of cooking
and then I put
what they do to the store
and get a pro painting
or just bail
and do something else.
I've already replaced one
of the screws here
up here to a rusted out
or just here
or something.
But this is one of the ones
with the sideburner.
But anyways,
I spent $150 on this thing
and it was a gift to me,
so I figured
he probably spent
two or three hundred dollars on it.
It's got a sideburner,
it's got a little primer on it.
These little lighting things,
I had to buy another one
of these,
the igniter,
the igniter thing,
which actually
lasted all of the parts
so far that I've ever
done.
Out of everything,
the igniter surprisingly
lasted a long time.
I actually put
contact cleaner down in there
to protect it
from the elements,
which probably
gave it another five years
to be honest.
Every time I replaced
the batteries,
I just spray more contact
cleaner down in there.
You don't have contact cleaner,
buy it,
it's great.
If you don't have
silicon spray,
buy it,
it's great.
It's safe to use on almost
everything.
Silicon spray is great
for plastics,
and there's not really
any bad application
of silicon spray.
That I'm aware of.
There probably
are other plastics,
perhaps,
certain plastics,
perhaps,
new plastics.
You give the plastic
itself to stick down
the oils
and the plastic might break down.
Weak air oils
from silicon.
Oh no!
If you get like a hundred
percent silicone
when you're going to
shoot in,
the stuff I have is
the blaster.
All the blaster stuff I
have.
I have the silicon spray.
I have the blaster
blaster,
which will eat away,
like, at rusty stuff.
If you need to adjust
a whatever act,
I'm actually looking at
one that I used to.
I couldn't get it off,
but I did get it
secured,
securely screwed back
on there,
but we had a faucet
that the valve
on the faucet crept out.
Well, I had just
purchased another faucet
and attached the faucet
to the faucet,
instead of having
to re-sodder the pipe
connected to the house.
So we basically have
an open,
a failed open.
I finally got
to first stop leaking
with various,
various ways,
and then I put a faucet
on top of that
and I used the blaster
to break all that shit
up,
so that I could actually
unscrew it
and get it sealed back.
But I did not
want to have to
fix it the right way.
I wanted me
easy fix,
so I put a faucet
on the faucet.
So that's an example
of using the blaster
where you got
stubborn stuff.
If you've got
like battery
s at all
or something,
you can use it
for that.
Anyways,
I'm still rambling.
I don't know
what to do.
But I guess I should
put it back on.
I'm not sure
where I am.
It goes on there.
I
two-propane tanks
are replaced
with the igniter
and whatever.
And it's been running
for like another
five years or more.
I feel like
it's been here for a while.
So I want to say
we,
well I guess we got it
when we moved in
and then I bought
parts for it
at some point in time.
But I want to say
it all looks different.
I guess that was five years.
Since I've
missed it.
So I started to think
about, you know,
it's not, you know,
I started to think
about what I was cooking.
And I noticed
I said, well,
just use the other
thing.
And then
it's about cooking
things
and still have the same
problem.
And we used it
like two or three times.
But before
finally I said,
something is obviously
wrong.
I can't have two
bad tanks
with the same exact
amount of pressure.
I took the plates
off and everything.
And I looked at the gas
coming out.
And one, as well
as the other.
So it's two
pro-paint tanks that you
bought at two different
times because the same
amount of gas coming out
of this.
It's going to be
regulated, right?
There's also
like little holes, you
know, that the
heating element is
not, but I know to
protect those.
So they
weren't damaged at all.
And so I knew
that it wasn't that,
and I was pretty sure
it was regulated.
So it took
it all apart.
It was a pain
that I had to use.
Two pliers, or a
wrench and a
pliers to get the
screw off the
thing here.
So I made sure I
got some grease
that all up in the
circuit.
I figured it
hard again if I
needed to.
That looks
bad, right?
It looks
too bad that's
okay.
So what I found out
after looking at that
said, you know, I've
messed with these
regulators before.
I've punched them
around a little bit
and smacked them
around a little bit
and gotten them to
work.
I have a little
quirk here that it
was giving to me
by a little
box.
And it had
a regulator issue
also.
And I ran silicon
through it, smacked it
around a little bit.
You know, you turn
on and off the gas.
You kind of
smack it around and
kind of get those
valves going.
I've never
taken a regulator
apart.
I didn't look at how
they worked a long
time ago.
I did.
I don't know how they
worked.
But the idea is like
this is supposed to
have some kind of
tilt on it.
If you're like
mocking around and
don't put the gas on.
You're
something up and
turn the gas on.
I don't
close.
Close.
Open.
I can't tell
it.
So I ran silicon
and using a
well, my mouth.
Or a
can of air.
Or a
if you want to use
as a compressor to
clean it in and out.
And I put
enough silicon in
it so that it would
drip all the way down
the little pipe.
It's a little
pipe.
And then I kind of
blew it.
So I saw silicon
coming out of the
little hole on the
regulator.
And then there was
silicon coming out of
the front part
good pleasure
into the
plugs in the first
things in total.
All right.
I got silicon in
and out of this thing.
Which probably isn't
that practical.
I blew it out
as much as I could
as I could.
With the
can of air,
blew it all out,
got as much as the
silicon out of there
that I could.
And
actually
smacked it around a
little bit.
But the hammer and
beat it on the table,
just kind of loosen
stuff up before and
after I did that.
And seems to be
working good.
Because before when I
turned it on, it
would just kind of
wouldn't make that
sound.
Like that sound of
that sound where
like something is
angry.
And now, you know,
I hear this when I turn
it on.
I hear something like
a sound I get to see
these yellow,
I see the other
flames.
Whereas before it was
just kind of the
little pillaging flame
coming out.
And it was not coming
out with a
force.
You know, there was
some logic in
thinking that maybe
some spider is
got in there and
messed up the line.
There's something
like that.
Obviously I'm
then not even logical
here.
Something like that.
I kind of messed up
a bit.
Something in the
process.
Anyway, you know,
the sideburner
like ever.
So that's as long as
short of it.
It's just,
don't be one of those
people.
Just throw away your
grill.
Take the time to
protect the elements.
The heating elements.
The parts of the
gas comes out of.
You don't really
worry about the worry
about much else.
You know, you want to
protect the gas
of lines from getting
rusted.
So if your
firewall craps out,
don't let it rust
out the rest.
And then
eventually, possibly
hit your
line.
And then like, you
know, call the
problem and such
things.
I mean, it is
a real worst case
scenario.
Your grill starts
kind of getting hot and
melting.
And then like,
flames start shooting out
of the side of it.
Or something,
which is not ideal.
But, you know,
kind of for me,
the worst case scenario
would be like,
I don't even know,
like, the gas would
have billed up somewhere
and blow it
out.
And then, you know,
the thing would explode
and become
something.
Grinning it
or something.
But, in general,
you're even
going to be
able to
protect the
elements and
protect the lines,
the gas lines,
I feel comfortable enough
to do whatever
that I want to do with
the stupid thing.
But, don't be
all those people
that throw away your grill
and
put it out in the front
on.
You know, take the time
to the research.
You're going to
cost you 150 bucks.
This cost me nothing to
fix.
You know, this
regulated probably
going to last me
another five years.
And maybe I got
a couple of years
in the
part that protects
the burners.
But, now, I don't
have to go by
regularly during
and I also don't have to
swap out the
paint tanks.
I was about to go
to get another
broken thing to say
screw it.
But, you know,
I'm like being
able to do some
troubleshooting
and realize
that it's not the
tanks.
It's not regulated.
So, I've had
some success doing
the same thing before
with other regulated
stuff that you're
going to throw
on this guy in
the same thing
as well.
But, hope, hope,
hope.
You can order parts.
Like I said, I
wouldn't pay you more than
150 bucks for parts.
You can pay
what for parts
from one site to
the other.
So, shop around.
Get the part
number.
Get the part number
that not the website
uses, but the part
number of the actual
part.
Start research
for that.
Any of the other
other part numbers you
get from the
results of that
search.
Aftermarket
part number are
third-party
parking numbers.
It's just like four
people that make this crap.
So, really, there's
only like a handful
of actual different
kinds of regulators
for the market
that's, you know,
your home
people.
Piece of garbage.
Real.
Anyways.
Hope
that helps you out.
You'll have a good one
and stay safe
and whatnot.
Get some grilling.
Later.
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