Traeger Restoration Episode 2 - Dismantling and stripping the Traeger BBQ 100 Deluxe

Momentarily questioning my sanity…

So if you were around for Episode 1, you probably realized pretty quickly that I had a project on my hands. A Traeger that clearly hadn’t been in service for a long time and which the owner was considering someone might just take for scrap, which took two of us to load and unload, weighs a TON, and looked to be in pretty dadgum questionable condition right out of the gate.

I knew the moment I picked it up it was going to need to be de-rusted, because there was a lot of rust on it. This wasn’t any news to me — the grease tray, what was left of it, had a large hole in the middle, and the firepot was rusted out. Both would need to be replaced, which I expected. The heat baffle was also missing, it appeared, so I figured on replacing that, too.

The auger was stuck as well. Again, no great shock because it had been stored uncovered in the previous owner’s side yard for 8 months. We have wet winters in Oregon, and there were clearly still pellets in it. I honestly would’ve been more shocked if it wasn’t stuck at this point.

In taking off the rust, I also knew that I would have to strip off the old paint–no sense in leaving it on there just to have to paint over it. I decided I wanted to get it down to bare metal. Having never tackled this kind of project, though, I wasn’t sure where to begin.

Finding the right tools for the job…

This took care of some of the surface rust, but still left quite a bit. So I started to experiment with different options and methods.

• Vinegar, Baking Soda, and Foil – This was one I found online on another site. I was… less than impressed with the outcome. Also, the sharp edges inside of the grill pieces shredded bits of the foil off, leaving me to vaccuum them out later.
• Wire brushing – I started out with just a grill brush on some of the metal pieces, which worked all right but I lack the patience to do something like that by hand. I moved on to a wire brush attached to a drill, which also worked at a higher rate of speed (I can hear anyone with an angle grinder laughing right now, I’ll wait until they’re done… thanks.) This, again, got a lot of the bigger, loose pieces off, as well as loose paint, but I still wasn’t happy with the results.
• Rust dissolver spray – I was really hoping this would be the magic bullet I’d been seeking. And like other things, it did have an impact on things, but it required a lot more maintenance to ensure it was working properly than I had hoped for, because you needed to make sure that the solution remained wet while it worked, meaning constant re-misting of areas. I also missed the part where it indicated it may cause discoloration, which isn’t a huge deal when we’re going to paint over a surface, but absolutely is a problem with stainless steel.

Honestly, I tried all of these methods, and various combinations of them, before I finally landed on the fastest solution for it. But I would continue to try these methods throughout the deconstruction process.

Some disassembly required…

It eventually occurred to me that some of the areas (the interior of the grill, for instance) might be easier if I took the whole thing apart, so I set out to do that. Before I pulled the auger tube, though, I decided it would be best to get the auger un-stuck. And after seeking advice from Traeger owners who had been there before, I came away with a series of methodologies that would eventually unstick my auger in the tube. In no particular order (because they all contributed, though it’s questionable as to how much)

• Banging with a mallet from the motor end
• Holding a piece of wood against the tip of the auger from the firepot end and banging on it with a mallet
• Inserting a screwdriver through the auger’s drive shaft and cranking on it back and forth
• Grunting and yelling like a cave man while doing the above actions
• Utilizing a blowtorch to try and burn off the stuck pellets

I couldn’t honestly tell you what was the final nail in the coffin that let it move, but I finally was about to rotate the auger out of the tube using the screwdriver crank method, then cranked it back in to break loose what stuck pellets remained, eventually clearing the tube.

Once the auger was out, I then removed the auger tube and the side storage bin (I’d already removed the hopper cover to access the electronics). I also eventually discovered that, despite my reading on the subject online, the Traeger BBQ 100 roll top, as awkward to clean as it is while still in the grill, can actually be removed from the grill through the slot on the back.

The fastest method for removing paint and rust from the Traeger BBQ 100 Deluxe…

Well, I used the earlier methods on the Traeger over the next few days, and I’d make dents in the progress but honestly? There was a LOT of rust on this machine when I got it, and my solutions up until this point had felt less effective for massive rust spots than maybe against smaller, surface rust. And it was that night that Amanda said something to me that seemed too easy.

“Did you try sandpaper?”

I stood there, jaw agape for a moment.

Sandpaper?

Look, I tried everything else at this point based on suggestions from the internet. Most of it was stuff I didn’t already have on hand, but sandpaper? I had that on hand in basically any grit from 80 up to 400. And I hadn’t yet tried it because… well.. why start with what you know when you can try something new, I guess?

The bottom line is, sandpaper wound up being the clear winner in the “removing rust AND paint as quickly and painlessly as possible.” At the time that I started using sandpaper, I’d probably put in 6-8 hours on the Traeger trying to get everything stripped off. With the sandpaper I stripped an entire side in ten minutes one evening, and wound up putting maaaybe another 4 hours into the stripping process to prepare for paint. At the end of the day, what I knew from other projects was what worked, and realistically would’ve saved me a bit of cash on the alternatives. (At the end of the project, I’ll parse out everything that was purchased to get it to the condition that we ended up with in two categories – items that really progressed the project, and items that, were I to do it all over again, I probably would’ve skipped, so you can see what the actual cost to restore was for me, and what it *should* have cost).

Overall, the stripping process went better than I expected–there were some spots that I eventually got it to a “I’m okay with it being in this condition” point, while others I literally took everything down to bare metal. The next step? Paint. But that’s for another episode.