The Ducane is Back to Work

Started Some Ribs This Morning at 11:00 In My Old Ducane Gas Grill.  Will Do A Whole Chicken
When the Ribs Are Finished.

Love ribs!

What kind of wood did you use?

Awesome-is that a dry rub-and if so, which one do you prefer???

The Wood is Oak From My Yard,and the Rub is from The Thrill of The Grill Cookbook  with the Cumin Omitted.

Nice ribs..

I hate our Ducane!  A huge disappointment.  One of the worst and most expensive purchases I ever made - $1400 to produce unsatisfactory heat.  It is the fancy s/s cabinet with a side burner and storage below.    My wife insisted we get it!  We have had it since 1996 and have replaced the u burner and the baffle plate and the grates one time..Maybe for $160.00.  Looks great..can't perform.  Ladies ..You know what I am talking about.

The first problem is that the grates are s/s rather than cast iron with enamel.  So, they retain absolutely no heat and sear nothing!  The u-burner is so poorly designed that there are hot spots all over the damn thing.

We brought a Ducane because we always thought it was the best char-broiler.  They went in the crapper and deservedly so.  Weber took them over originally just for the parts.  Have they recreated the brand?  I hope not!

Plain and simple - My Ducane cannot get it up! 

The Grill Would Take at Least 20 min to Heat Up. I Will Use it As A Smoker Until It Falls Apart.
My New Lowes Special $300 At The End of Last Season Gets to 700 in 10 Minutes with All 4
Burners On.

Ben Baah,

Do you still have your Ducane?  i can help you up the heat

Drill out the oriface one drill size (the numbers, not the fractions) and change the grills to heavy porcilain coated steel wire.

You also have to leave at least a 12 inch of space between the briquettes.

For Ribs, you don't want or need a high heat! The Ducane might be just right for Ribs!

Mar52 - Yes I do.....Hey thanks for trying to help me.

Right now if you look at Tony's Ducane in the pictures (the first one has the wood to the left side of the fire pit).  He has no briquettes at all in this unit!!  And the lava support grate that the wood rested on..That's rotted out twice on me.  Just broke in little pieces.  His looks like it's ready to go at anytime. 

You also see he, too, has stainless steel top grates.  His are still in good condition; so are mine.  Big f'ing deal..They are part of the problem!  They are no good!  OK, so I need to find heavy porcelain coated steel wire grates; I can try to do that..

My current briquette pattern has each one touching each other.  So, I will remove a lot of them as you are suggesting.  Giving more air and more chance for the flames to rise up.  The replacement package for my model said I am supposed to use them all....I will change that though as you say.  

I do give it a good cleaning twice a year.  I take it all apart and take a sewing needle and make sure each of the little gas holes along the u-burner are open.  I check it by turning on the unit and looking for the blue flame.  If I see any orange flame, I run the needle back and forthinto the little holes  to open the hole more.

What I do not understand is your suggestion of drilling out the oriface?  Can you explain that a bit more?  Sorry, I am mechanically challenged.  Do you just mean drilling out each of the holes in the u-burner to the next hole size?  There are tons of them, but I could do that.  My neighbor has a work bench with a vice and we can do that...So, is that what you mean?

Thanks

Incidently, my friend has a char broiler he told he "adapted" and now he gets 800 degrees out of it.  He said he drilled it but never explained exactly what he did.

Is it that they have limited the amount of heat you can generate for safety reasons?  Sort of like you cannot get a strong water flow or flush because of environmental restrictions to shower heads, etc. 

I cannot believe Tony has turned this Ducane into basically a fire pit!  Pretty funny.  It was not designed to burn wood.  Hey, it is working for him.

I will try all this.  If all else fails, I'm going to try and sell this piece of garbage and get one at Lowes for $300, too!  I'm just a sore loser and I still get upset how much I overpaid for this.  

I'll write you later.

I"m about to get ready for work.

Being the 3rd it should be busy at the store.

Mar - Thanks!  Have a good day..Make a lot of $$$$

I just saw where you live...Been there - Boy, it that a beautiful place...Lucky you.

George Strait loved it, too!