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My old Big Easy grill is getting pretty old. My flames were sputtering and the left burner had finally died. I thought for sure I'd need to look into a new one, but decided to try replacing the burners. It's cooking like new again! I couldn't be happer. It took about 15 minutes to replace the old burners nice and easy.
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The burners were by far the best price on Amazon. The installation is easy except for the nut that holds the connecting bar between the burners. This is the worst piece of engineering I've seen in a long while. Fortunately they give you 2 nuts per burner, because you're going to smash 1 per burner trying to get it to fit. Other than that the burners are great.Best Deals for Char-Broil Versaflame "Big Easy" Burner Replacement Kit
Ok, so this is a mixed review. The burners themselves fit perfectly as they are OEM parts provided by Charbroil. The problem that I encountered was in trying to assemble the crossover bar that links two burners together. The so-called "pal" nuts are not your pal. In fact, they are your enemy. They are extremely difficult to install. I was only able to install one of the four pal nuts that came with the two burners I had purchased. The other three were ruined after several attempts at getting them on. They are cheap junk, made in China, and of extremely flimsly design. They are not strong and they smash and mash up way too easily. Whoever designed these was diabolical.The posts on the burners upon which you place the nuts are not threaded. So you cannot simply screw on an ordinary nut. One reviewer on here wrote: "When installing the nuts, if you thread the post using a 5mm x .08 die, available at most hardware stores, you can screw the nuts on no problem." While that is one solution, you shouldn't have to run out to a store to buy a specialty tool in order to put this thing together.
I had previously ordered these burners 5 or 6 years ago from bbqparts.com. However, back then the twin burners came as a set, already assembled with the crossover bar attached to both burners and there was nothing to put together. Apparently, Charbroil stopped providing the twin burner sets that required no assembly and began selling individual burner components that require the customer to put them together. Why they did this makes no sense, but that's what they did.
Anyway, before ordering these burners from Amazon I had gone back to the bbqparts.com website only to find that they no longer carry them. Here's what bbqparts.com website says about why they no longer sell these burners:
"Charbroil has discontinued this burner assembly and it is no longer available from them or us. Charbroil, however, offers the individual components of the assembly burners, nuts, and connector rods as separate parts. We have tried these and found them very difficult to assemble for both us and our customers so we do not offer them. If you want to try that, please contact Charbroil directly to place an order."
So there you have it. A leading BBQ parts supplier will not sell these burner components because of the difficulty getting on the pal nuts. Fortunately, Amazon still carries these parts, and they are also available directly from Charbroil (I checked), but at a significantly higher cost.
Since I had none of the pal nuts left, what I did to secure the crossover bar was to drill out the hole in a small wing nut until it was just slightly larger than the buner post where the connector bar goes. Then I forced the wing nut down onto the post using a hammer and screwdriver. Once the wing nut was all the way down to the bottom I squeezed it tightly onto the post with pliers so that it wouldn't come loose. This seemed to work and from there it only took a few minutes to install the now assembled twin burners into the grill. Everything worked fine and both burners lit as they were supposed to.
I am rating this product only a "2" because in the final analysis I don't like it and it caused me all sorts of wasted time and frustration. The basic point is that customers shouldn't have to go to extraordinary lengths to put these together. The posts that hold the crossover bar should be threaded so that ordinary nuts, not these poor quality pal nuts, can be used.
If you order these burners just know that you might have difficulty with the crossover bar assembly because of the pal nuts issue. If anyone has any other ideas of how to get these nuts on without ruining them, I'd like to hear them.
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