In mid July, I was sitting in Michigan visiting the in-laws, and I saw a 18.5 for sale in San Diego on another website. Here's the pic from their ad:
It had been listed for some time, but I reached out to the seller and he replied that he still had it. I asked if he had a price in mind, and he came back with a VERY reasonable offer. At that point I contacted
@Jason and asked if he would agent. He said he would be glad to. We made a couple of phone calls and texts, and he was incredibly diligent and patient in arranging a meet-up with the seller. He really went the extra mile to make this happen.
In the meantime, I went back to Las Vegas for a day, and then I was off to lead an 11 day trip to Poland with students. One morning, I woke up in Poland with the text message from Jason that he had secured the grill, and he sent me some pics. I was super excited, and told him he made my day 6000 miles away.
Overall, it was in fair shape, but one leg socket was broken, and another just barely hanging on. Regardless, I was super excited to get back and get it restored. I got back to Vegas late last Tuesday night, and contacted Jason on Thursday. I decided against shipping it, afraid it could get damaged. Instead, I decided to drive on down to the San Diego area to meet up and pick up the grill. To make it fun, I told the kids we'd spend the day at the beach, which we haven't done this year. I left Vegas at 5:30 Saturday morning, and was down at South Ponto Beach by 10:15. Got the kids changed, and just as we were heading to the beach, Jason showed up and after a couple minutes meeting, we made the switch. The kids and I spent the day at the beach, left around 3:30 that afternoon and was back in Vegas by 8:45 that night. Good times!
Over the weekend, I started restoration...the biggest pain was drilling holes in the sockets to reattach the legs. I went to Home Depot and picked up Milwaukee tool cobalt tipped drill bits do the job...they worked great FYI.
Monday I cleaned up the exterior plus the ash pan:
And last night I put it all together, using #6 stainless steel screws, nuts and washers to reattach the sockets.
Eventually, I'm going to replace the triangle, as it's so rusty that all my sanding/cleaning with wire brush attachment made so little difference. Finally, I added a Zavod handle I'd been saving for a special grill. I know there's been a lot of talk today about finding yellows, but I will say this...with patience and the help of GREAT grillfellas like
@Jason diamonds in the rough like this are still able to be found.
Topic: Yellow 18.5 with the help of a Grillfella (Read 3170 times)