Caliente 4001.0012 Argentine/Tuscan Style Grill Kit (Universal for 22.5" Weber-Style Grills)

Not a lot of reviews yet from full price buyers, so here’s one:1. Shipping: Ordered on Wednesday, delivered from Ohio, to Puget Sound area, Washington by noon Friday. Absolutely amazing. Fedex listed at 23 lbs and about 24” square. Free shipping. Someone paid a bundle to ship that amount of weight that far, that fast.2. Packaging: Not particularly well protected, but this thing is so strong, it didn’t need it. No damage problems.3. Assembly: Easy. Directions are sparse but sufficient. Pretty intuative. Fine tuning is simple. Took less than 30 minutes total.4. Construction: Ridiculously overbuilt!!Solid stainless steel. Where anyone else would have used hollow stock, the Caliente has solid stainless bar. Single stainless weld on HEAVY stainless wall. Heavy crank handle and shaft is stainless. Only non-stainless is ring that supports coal grate. If a well maintained Weber will last a lifetime, your great-great-great grandkids will squabble over who gets the Caliente. Any possible repairs will use basic hardware parts, and will be super simple.Beyond commercial-use strength, this thing is mil-spec, combat-tested, bbq gear.5. Suggestions: Only one. People are willing to pay twice the cost of a Weber for this add-on, usually are gadget/gizmo geeks. A neat and easy mod would be to build the unit to handle stack ons such as the kettle pizza, or the weber rotisserre ring, on top of the unit. Either that or an adapter ring to sit on top, that would allow a stack on. I have both the kettle pizza, and rotisserre, and they are the same dimensions as the Caliente top, so no stack. Bummer.All being said, an impressive product, solving a basic shortcoming in the Weber. Well designed, and built not just to last, but to pass down through the generations.Addendium:Used the unit in conjunction with a sous vide steak cook. Was able to do a small pile of charcoal/metal pot with traeger pellets, set at the lowest level to smoke the steaks for 30 minutes. Did not even come close to changing the sou vide cook temp. Then added a full chimney of searing temp coals, and cranked up to near touching the meat grate. Super easy, great sear, nice smoke.Great unit.

The first one I received was dented where it would have sat on the grill and looked like it had been returned by someone else. The instructions had dark prints in them. Sent that one backs s ordered another. This one looked brand new and was fine.The instructions aren't that great. Pictures are small. Basically had to figure out how the wires were supposed to get clamped and wrapped by trial and error. Like another poster I received 4 wires but should have only gotten 2. But there are 4 holes where the wires can go so it was confusing. But once I got it together it seems pretty sturdy and will work well. I put a high temp felt gasket where it meets the Weber base which seemed to help it sit better on the Weber base

Great product with one exception. The mating surface that meets the bottom portion of the Weber kettle is about 1/4" wider than the kettle rim. If it sits exactly square on the kettle, there is no gap. If it moves the slightest, there is a gap the will let air in and mess with your temperatures. This can be solved with some high heat gasket material. However, at a $233 price tag, you should have to do that, but that's life in the big city, right?The Stainless Steel ring is built like a tank but not imperious to damage if shipped with heavy loose steel parts flying around in the re-packaged box.One star for Amazon. I was sent a re-packaged returned unit. I can live with that, but it was packaged with all the parts loose in the box. The steel parts banged around inside during shipment causing some dings in the Stainless Steel kettle ring.The unit will function ok, at least it didn't damage the mating surface to the kettle.So beware, read the description carefully, but with that in mind.

I was a little apprehensive with the purchase because of the price but justified it with visions of searing a steak like a pro and being able to control the heat of my Weber kettle with another method besides opening and closing the vents. After the package showed up on my doorstep and I lifted it I could tell by the weight that this thing was heavy duty. When I opened the box, I could tell that everything I saw and read about this contraption on Amazon was not exaggerated. The stainless construction of the spacer is a piece of art in itself, completely flawless, and the mechanism that controls the lifting and dropping of the coals is simple, yet effective and ingenious.For my first trial, I dumped a hefty pile of coals out of my chimney starter onto the grate at its lowest position to spread them out, put my grate on, and raised the coals up to the point that they were touching the food grate. After a few minutes, I then set a trio of 2½”bone-in ribeyes on the near molten grate and gave the steaks a nice char. After a few minutes on both sides, I dropped the coals down, put the cover on the grill and let the internal temp creep up to what turned out to be a perfect medium rare. A steakhouse could have charged the price of this attachment for those three steaks alone.A couple of days later I picked up some freshly ground 80/20 and put this thing to the test on the great American staple, cheeseburgers. I seared them up just like the steaks and had a little flare-up, but I needed to worry, I just cranked the handle to drop the grate, and my inferno was over as quick as it started. After a little while, I covered the grill, let the burgers go to medium rare and topped them with some American cheese and fried onions, and covered one last time to melt the cheese. Another backyard success story, Thanks, Caliente Grill!