Traeger Restoration Episode 1 - FAQs
Restoring a Traeger BBQ 100 Deluxe
For those of you who don’t know the background, a couple weeks ago there was a guy on Facebook marketplace who was giving away an old Traeger. I’m talking this was still made in the USA, just up the road from me in Mount Angel, Oregon, and it was pretty high end at the time that it came out.
When you look online right now you can’t find a whole lot about it, so true to brand I was a bit hesitant at first. I’ve never restored a barbecue of any kind before, much less a Traeger pellet smoker, so I had to ask myself “am I getting myself in over my head here?”
Two weeks in, I don’t think so. I think this is going to turn out really well. It’s taking a lot of work to get it to the point where it’ll be usable, but it is something where I am pretty excited for how it is going so far.
With that out of the way as an intro, I thought it might be worth addressing a few frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions
Why are you restoring it?
Well, there’s two reasons.
One of them is, really, this is a beautiful old piece of American-made machinery. It’s not something that Trager makes anymore and it’s actually a pretty quality piece. I’ve gotten a lot of the rust off of it because it was pretty rusted up when i picked it up, and it still has good metal bones underneath all of that rust. Sure, it’s taken a little bit of elbow grease, but i kind of knew that coming into it.
Reason two, let’s be honest… I’m kind of a cheapskate. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to buy a brand new Traeger but the bottom line is the size that i want is expensive. I’m not going to go out and pay money for one if i can pick up a free one and all i’m paying for is a couple of parts and a couple of cans of paint to get it looking nice again. I can save myself a little bit of dough here, because it doesn’t matter to me the model itself as long as it works.
What model are you restoring?
It’s the Traeger BBQ 100 Deluxe edition. It doesn’t look like any of the models they have out now—it’s got a roll top on the front.
I called up Traeger to see if they still had a manual for it they directed me to a website that had a manual for a Traeger BBQ 100, which is a slightly different model and so it wasn’t especially helpful to me.
This is a top of the line model at the time it came out, but realistically the only sort of information I was able to find on this thing when I first started looking into it is a press release from Traeger in 2006 with one of the founders taking a picture with it as well as a guy on reddit who had actually restored one himself and posted pictures of it. (That poor dude has become kind of my go-to asking random questions about the machine.)
Couldn’t you just buy a new one?
I could if i wanted to spend the money on it. Like I said before, I’m kind of a cheapskate.
How hard is it to find parts for a BBQ 100 Deluxe?
Not as hard as you would think it would be. When I first called up Traeger support to ask “hey do you have parts for this? I’m thinking about picking it up.” The support person said essentially we don’t know if anything current can fit on this this thing. I get it, it’s 14-15 years old and they don’t support it anymore.
The good news is, you find parts like the fire pot, the thermostat, the auger motor, the fan, the auger itself, all online.
The parts that actually were hardest to find were the grease tray and the heat baffle, both of which are just folded sheet metal. The reddit user who restored one was gracious enough to provide me with the dimensions of the grease tray and from there I was able to make a pattern in Sketchup. I’ve purchased sheet metal for it and am having a friend with better tools cut and bend it for me based on the model.
It turns out local to me, there is a guy in Canby who actually does make the original grease tray and it’s only like 50 bucks. That’s what I paid for the entire sheet of sheet metal and I’ll have leftover when I’m done with it, but the guy was a random craigslist ad that I stumbled onto on accident. Alternatively, any place that cuts and bends sheet metal could probably fabricate the parts with the dimensions and pattern. It isn’t a complicated set of parts to make, thankfully.
Are you inviting me over for dinner once you’ve got your Traeger BBQ 100 Deluxe working again?
I am not opposed—I’m just saying if i’ve thrown a brisket on and somebody happens to be in the area and decides to stop by you know I am open to feeding you as long as I know in advance that you’re coming.
Anything else?
If you have any questions about the process, feel free to hit me up in the comments, reach out via Instagram DM, or email me! If you want to follow along with the process, there will be updates on both my Instagram and YouTube channel, so feel free to follow for more content!
