It was a great day (Yellow Resto Pics Added)

[hawgheaven]

Ya' done good brutha... Grate day!!

[Firemunkee]

That's quite a score!

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[Rub]

Congrats on the acquisition! Take pics of the yellow's restoration. I've got a yellow in roughly that shape, I'd like to see how you do it.


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Will do, and thanks everyone.

[Bob BQ]

Congrats, Rub! Definitely a grate day! Looking forward to seeing them cleaned up!


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[Rub]

     

Take pics of the yellow's restoration. I've got a yellow in roughly that shape, I'd like to see how you do it.

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I was able to dig into the yellow the past couple days. It was more rough than I initially thought. Two of the leg sockets were about to fall off. I had to decide whether to drill and do the fender washers or take it to my buddy to be welded. I went with the weld and am glad I did. I took the bowl over to my friend Jason's (Unknown kettle/drum hinges) new shop. The man has crazy good welding skills. He fixed it and you can barely tell he did anything, but they are now rock solid. EDIT: before and after were flipped, they are now labeled correctly.

AFTER







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BEFORE




So with those now solid I moved on to the bowl porcelain damage. I have a 22" yellow that also had a fair amount of porcelain damage and it drove me nuts. When I looked at it all I ever saw was the rusty pock marks. I knew I couldn't match the color but if I could get close it would tone down the stark black pock marks against the bright yellow. So the plan was to do the same with the 18" as I did on the 22". After a general cleaning of the bowl I got the Dremel out and used a small wire cup to clean off rust where I could. Then I used white high heat Rustoleum and hit all the rusty spots. I followed that with a razor blade and steel wool to get the excess white off of the good porcelain. Once that was dry I followed up with some high temp engine paint in Daytona Yellow. I sprayed the pocks where the grill straps popped and hand painted the smaller marks. After 2 coats of that I went back with the blade and steel wool.



It came out pretty good. Nowhere close to perfect but I got rid of the ugly black marks which was my goal. I also sanded and tung oiled the handle, cleaned the legs and top vent, drilled out and reattached the 3 bottom vents that had rusted off, and cleaned up the triangle.









So I wanted to cook some burgers for my wife and myself on it tonight. I lit a half chimney of Kingsford and centered the coal on the grate, opened all of the vents, and put the lid on to let it preheat. I got out my infrared thermometer and checked out the temp on the bowl at the most orange spot and it temped at 356° at the hottest spot. The yellow paint was good for up to 500° so all was good.



Then I got the crazy idea to add a quarter chimney of lit lump to the party and that took it too hot. I didn't get a picture but the temp in the same area was now over 625° and sure enough it blackened a couple of the painted yellow spots.



Lesson learned. I've used lump in my other yellow with no damage and that's got to be because the charcoal grate is larger and I can keep the lump away from the sides. So tomorrow I'll go back and repaint the damaged areas and stick to just briquettes from now on in the 18".

[swamprb]

Yup! Nice job on the ol' yeller Rob!

I've pretty much resigned myself that any painting of the bowls with the Dupli-Color Engine paint is going to burn up and turn black in the hot zones, I've tried 2000* primer as a base coat but the colors burn at 450++.

[WNC]

Beautiful job on the restore!
Sucks you've got to back and repaint...
Still looks great, handle and top vent especially


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[CatskillSmoker]

Nice work @Rub . Nice to see the yellow blush. Enjoy those grails

[johnny 2 shack]

nice pick ups !