Wow! Nice to see so many fans of the grill I just purchased! I had Tuesday off (June 18) and was getting ready for a party that night. So I went to my local San Leandro Costco to get chips etc. Well, there on the floor were four Virco grills, one out of the box. I took one look, and wished I had brought my truck. I was back later that day with the truck and brought one home. IMHO a full size pickup truck is needed to carry this thing. I also had some ignitor problems but after adjustment of the gaps they all seem to work ok. I also fiddled with the connectors underneath the control panel and that seemed to help. I also found some fraying of the glass fabric cover on the ignitor wiring to the rear rotisserie burner, where it exits the back of the cabinet. I moved the whole cable up a bit to expose an unfrayed portion to the metal edge. I'm planning on wrapping the cable with some heat resistant tubing where it goes through that area, to prevent more fraying. I had a similar problem with a table-top patio heater I got at Costco a while ago. The ignitor cable frayed and shorted out on some metal. Easy enough to fix once I discovered the cause. I cooked a rib steak on it last night and it came out great. It was kind of hard to see some of that beautiful stainless get carbonized, but what the heck, it's a BBQ grille. The right door on mine has a very minor crease in it,which it took me a couple of days to notice. I'm not about to return this behemoth because of that! The burners all seem to function perfectly, with nice blue flames. Oh, I don't think the handle and the shelf are interchangeable. The spacing on the bolt holes are wider for the shelf than for the handle. Still have to hook up the rotisserie motor. I'll probably do a chicken tomorrow. All in all this is a beautiful, extremely well made grill. I've been using charcoal for years... I have a Kingsford egg shaped grille that I use to roast chicken and turkey. It comes out great, but I'm tired of all the smoke inhalation I inevitably get doing this. I also have a New Braunfels horizontal smoker with separate fire box. I have been consistently disappointed with the dried out results I get with this one. It's also very labor intensive, adding just the right amount of wood/charcoal and trying to keep the temperature even. I'm keeping both, because sometimes you just want that real smoke, but the Virco Classic will be my main grill. Faster and cleaner! Oh, and thanks to those who posted the info on the natural gas conversion. I'm going to order one of those kits right away. I'll have to run the gas line a considerable distance to the patio, but it will be worth it in the long run. One minor complaint: the wheel locks are very hard to get at... but they do work. Just for grins, I took a magnet to the whole unit. It's nearly all 304 non-magnetic. The only magnetic parts I found was the surround for the ceramic rear burner, and some nuts holding the chassis bolts under the cooking unit. As for the stainless burner tubes not holding up to heat, I hope they do ok. After all, they use stainless steel for automotive exhaust systems... which contain a lot more corrosive gases than propane.

zbull, I can only give you my experience. I too had excessive yellow flames with LP. Even after adjusting the venturis open all the way there was still some yellow tips, but it didn't seem to affect the cooking any. I had read some posts from one or two others that had a similar problem. They had contacted Virco and received smaller orfices to compensate and it seemed to solve the problem. I am at a higher altitude than many (4500) and I atributed this to the problem. When I received my conversion kit I noticed the size of the orifice was 1.70 mm which, not to be too technical, converts to about 16000 BTU output, not the 20K that the burners are rated at. I actually found this to work rather well for me as I am getting nice blue flames. I had to adjust my venturis all the way closed after installing my conversion kit, because the increased air supply was not allowing the gas to travel all the way to the end of the burner tube where the ignitor was. I only discovered this after lighting the burners by hand and noticing the flames did not go all the way to the end of the tube. Once I closed the venturis, this problem was solved and the burners lit fine again. I could probably increase the size of the orifice to both regain my BTU's and be able to open the venturis a bit, but I am getting plenty of heat. By my estimates with an oven thermometer, I am getting about 600 at the grates! More than enough to sear any cut of anything for me. I don't mean to get too technical, but it is more than just a yes or no answer. The bottom line, I think, is that the orifices they send you are undersized for the BTU's that the grill is rated for, and if you have 7" of gas pressure (same as I did) then you should have similar results. I think I might try and drill the orifices out one size larger, according to the charts, this should increase my BTU's to 18K per burner. Well see though. I hope this has helped to some degree.

Delray, I think the 450 max is what you get when (if) you convert to NG. I have been able to get over 500 as you have with LP. I am in the process of converting to NG now, so I will keep you posted as to the accuracy of this claim. I got the NG line ran to my "Q" yesterday and purchased the 12' NG line with quick disconnect from Home Depot. I am just waiting on the kit from Virco now. As far as the flame adjustment goes I had the same yellow tips on my flames. After adjusting mine, it did not seem to make a difference in the color of the flame. We are at the same altitude so I am sure that your results will be the same. As long as you are not getting soot anywhere then I would not worry about it. If you do want to try and experiment, you can adjust the venturis for the burners as follows: Remove the drip pan, open the doors and lay down, looking up into your grill with a phillips screwdriver. Where the burner meets the valve, you will see a small screw in the venturi adjustment. If you undo the screw, you can rotate the short tube around the venturi, thereby increasing or decreasing the amount of air. If you increase the air flow it will decrease the yellow tips. Like I said, I have mine on wide open and didn't notice any difference. I called Virco on this and they suggested it might be the altitude here, and suggested some smaller orifices to compensate. I haven't really worried about it because the amount of yellow is minute and I don't have any soot. I do know that blue flames do get hotter, but my grill gets plenty hot so I don't think I am going to worry about it. At least not until I do complete my NG conversion and readjust if needed. Good luck. bsbbq

Mini-review of Expo's Professional grill and a comparision to the Virco. After five or six years of frustration using my Weber (not enough heat) I decided to consider an upgrade. I really wanted the Weber to work, but I just couldn't get the temp over 450F. One day at Home Depot I saw the Straublestone (misspelled, I'm sure) and felt that was an upgrade at a reasonable price. So, before buying that I shopped around to be sure of my choice. One of the trips included a trip to Home Depot's Expo Center. This place is loaded with all the high-end grills, very painful to go in there because I want to buy ALL of them. ;-) But on this trip they had a new grill called the 'Professional'. It was priced at $1000 (actually $999 I think) and upon inspection it looked almost as good as the others that they had and a considerably lower price. I also strongly considered the $900 'Jenn-Air' which is really made by Vermont Castings. I choose the Pro over the Jenn-Air due to construction. It was almost all stainless where as the VC was not. So I coughed up my $1000 and went home a happy kid with his new toy. Well, about three months later I spot the Virco during a trip to Costco. Sheesh, two hundred dollars cheaper and ALL stainless. So I set out to sell the Pro (at a loss, of course) and buy a Virco. But I ended up with the MM Y0660 as explained earlier in this thread. The Pro grill is made by Charbroil for the Expo Center. They have also introduced a smaller, 45K BTU, 3-burner model for $800. Both grills has an unlimited warranty on the SS, a 10 year warranty on the burners and a 2 year warranty on any other part. Both grill come with a heavy-duty rotisserie standard and no side-burner. I don't know if this is an option, but I don't think that it is. The grill does not include a cover. It did come assembled at no additional charge. These grills arrived at the Expo unassembled and they sub-contract the assembly at their store. The Pro grill, while still a good product, seems to be overpriced when compared to the Virco. The Pro grill uses four 15K BTU cast iron burners for a 60K BTU total, same as the Virco. I was able to reach an indicated 550+ and I could tell that it was noticeably hotter than my old POS Weber. The pro's single biggest weak link is its drip tray design. First, it's fabricated out of epoxied or powder-coated steel, not stainless. Second, it is only accessable from the rear which makes it a bit of a pain to clean. and third, the dang thing is so poorly designed that it barely slides in it's slot. The tolerances are so poor that it wants to come out of its track and fall on one side or the other. It's hard to explain, but trust me, it sucks big time. I was so frustrated that I was in process of designing a new drip tray to be fabricated out of SS to replace that sorry design. I was quoted $100 by a local sheet-metal company. The Pro's rear IR burner is set in a black powder-coated steel panel wheras the Virco uses SS for the panel. The Pro's flame-tamers are make of regular steel and are black powder-coated. These will NOT last very long. They were starting to degrade during the three months that I owned my grill. They have a two-year warranty so you can probably get a set or two for free before the warranty expires. The cabinet on the Pro is inferior to the Virco. The cabinet is a single-walled wrap of stainless that has a two to three inch opening all the way around the top. So it does not offer any protection from the weather, it will get wet in there if the grill is uncovered. On the front are two single-wall doors, just folded SS sheetmetal. The Virco's cabinet is far superior. The Pro's lid is folded stainless sheet that is spot-welded on the sides. The Virco's is welded, ground and polished and as a result looks much nicer. The Pro did have a double wall lid but the gap is quite narrow. In spite of this, it did not discolor on the outside during my short ownership. The temperature gauge worked well and seems to be reasonably accurate but I never calibrated it to be sure. The handle on the lid looked like chrome plated steel, not solid SS as on the Virco. The handles on the sides of the cabinet were also chrome-plated, not SS. The Pro grill uses beautiful, cast & machined SS knobs. These really looks impressive, even better than the Vikings and DCSs. So there is absolutely nothing really wrong with the Pro except for it's price point. It served me very well and I was willing to deal with the non-SS parts as needed. But when compared to the Virco, it seems like it should be priced well under the $800 range. The Virco is truly unbeatable under $1000, at least for now. Who knows, maybe next year Virco will have some competition at that price point. -Terry