Barbecue Conversion
After working up a sweat from all of our engine conversions, we sure worked up an appetite! We thought to ourselves “we need something to cook food on”. So what better than a manly BBQ. We knew it would work, but we had never done it before, that had not stopped us in the past and wasn’t going to stop us then.
We discussed possible H2 BBQ designs and came up with a ton of plans, generally all having to do with creating our own custom manifold for the gas, meaning $$. One night at about midnight we decided to take a run to Home Depot and just see what parts were available. As we were perusing Depot’s inventory we saw a plethora of steel pipes and fittings we could use. It was like a Mecca to us, we grabbed iron tubing, drill bits, valves, fittings etc and ventured home to work on our project.
At about 2am we got home and went to work cutting and trying to drill into the iron. I think we broke about 15 drill bits that night, but kept at it. At around 4am we decided it was time for bed.
Later that week we got a group of volunteers together in late 2001 to build not only 1 bbq but 3 of them! As a side note, this was one of the most enjoyable times for converting, we had so many of the volunteers working on so many projects in a matter of hours). We decided on this conversion we would use an iron pipe with a quick connect and a valve at the end to run into a T connector and pipe out 6” in each direction. We then took the 6” pipes and drilled many little holes, although the thinnest we could get was 1/32” because our carbon bits kept breaking. We then faced the holes upside down and put the grill over the top.
Fuel was delivered from our H2 certified red cylinders with a 2 stage regulator to deliver 6 PSI, a safety check valve and quick connect to the BBQ’s.. We very carefully applied a flame from the bottom with the lid closed and a minimum flow of H2. H2 will pop when you first light your BBQ so be prepared to flinch, because it will make a sound like a .22 cal rifle going off with too much fuel. NOTE: Don’t leave the gas on or it could have a potential for a dangerous situation, not to mention you will lose all your fuel. So what to do now? Throw some meat and veggie meat on and see how it works! Oh man after a hard day of work there is nothing like the taste of fresh h2 cooked “Hindenburgers”. Believe it or not, but h2 cooked food actually tastes better in my opinion that anything type of fuel. Oh, yea the BBQ’s worked great!