I recently purchased a faded black pre-79 Bar-B-Q-kettle with a patent number that I am in the process of cleaning up/restoring. It has whitewall plastic wheels with a small tab damper on top and 3 wide double tab dampers on the bottom.
I am new here and I have some questions about how to date these pre-79 kettles. Specifically I am curious if it is possible to narrow down these kettles by the year. Please forgive me if the information I seek is posted elsewhere.
In what years were the rubber wheels, the plastic whitewall wheels and the current Weber wheel design introduced/used?
Also, my understanding is that single small damper tabs were used on earlier kettles on both the top and the bottom. They then switched to wider tabs, first wide double tabs on the bottoms and then eventually a single wide tab on the top was used as well, eliminating the single small tab all together.
Does anyone know the timeline on these damper changes?
I appreciate any information that you guys may have on these topics or any other similar kettle year info.