Tex, which grates does yours have?
Rounded and welded stainless. I don’t see any need to change them out at this point. I will be getting a cut to size steel plate to use as a plancha as well. Place in Fort Worth has lots of grades of steel and will plasma cut on demand.
Thx for all the replies btw. Weber ordered…next time anyone finds themselves in North NJ…
did not go with viking parts but do not recall where i got the replacements, sorry
Mic drop here boys, I give you the Infierno X-100 clocking in at $91 grand
I picked up one of these this Spring and love it Amazon.com
It replaced my 20 year old Weber Silver charcoal burner which finally corroded through on the bottom kettle.
The Performer takes a little Coleman lamp/stove style screw on propane tank and with one push of the piezo electric button, “whoosh” and you have a nice flame thrower getting your charcoal started. Weber added an inset circular grill so that you don’t need to remove the entire grill surface to add charcoal. So far I’ve used it 20 times on the same small propane tank without needing to replace it.
I can get have a fire to cook over in the same ten minutes it takes to get a gas grill hot.
While visiting my brother in Hawaii a few months back I used his Weber gas grill almost daily for a week to cook the dirt cheap local tuna.
Charcoal and gas cook differently. There is no way around it. You can sear much better over charcoal. There are less off-flavors from the smell of burning fat collected in the burner baffles. You can control the heat distribution better. I prefer charcoal. Many others don’t. I get it.
After every ten cooks or so, I need to dump the ash catcher under the kettle and replace it. Takes ten seconds.