Weber Q BBQ

Most questions I get when people see me using my Weber Q 200 bbq outside my Bushtracker are related to temperature and the fact that their Weber Q never seems to get hot enough.

As a person who has been involved in retailling Webers for over 25 years, I thought I had all the answers and had experienced or been told about all the issues that arise from time to time.

I would agree with them and tell them that wind was the enemy of the Weber Q (especially the older Baby Q) and that by ensuring that the bbq was sheltered from the wind as much as possible, then the performance would be enhanced to a satisfactory point. I said this because I knew it to be true and certainly my own caravan's Weber Q did not heat up as much as the one back at home that lives and works in a sheltered enviroment on my verandah.

For the past 12 months I have been telling my wife that the roast will take a little longer than it does at home because the wind is blowing or the ambient temperature is a little cold today. I explained that these were the reasons that I could not crackle the pork as I do at home or crisp the chicken skin just right.

On returning home from our recent travels I have had an epiphany. The reason the Weber Q at home gets much hotter (some 50C more) is that it is connected to a 9kg gas bottle via a regulator and hose. The caravan Weber Q is connected to the caravan gas reticulation via a bayonet fitting.

I am surmising that the regulator fitted to my Bushtracker does not allow the same gas flow as the regulator on the bottle feed to my home bbq. I swapped the hose on my caravan bbq with the one at home and connected it direct to the bottle with the result that it now obtains the full heat range.

I wonder just how many caravaners have been caught out by this and are living under the impression that their purchase of a Weber Q bbq has not been the success that they had expected.

I will now see if I can find a gasfitter who will connect a direct line to my bayonet outlet utilising the same type of regulator that are supplied with bbq hoses as opposed to the type fitted to the van's reticulated system by Bushtracker (which I am sure is mandated by Qld law).

Lance