Recently found the normally very expensive Primus silencer reduced to £34 at All Outdoors, so couldn,t resist buying it as without it the noise is unbearable, particularly in a quiet campsite early in the morning. This works well as recommended on White gas, (Coleman fuel, Aspen4), and canister gas reducing the noise significantly. The manufacturer does not recommend using paraffin, or diesel, and i suspect this is due to the enormous amount of soot and black smoke generated during the pre-heat process. So I got thinking. What if I use meths to pre-heat like we have used on our classic stoves for decades. And hey presto. it works. It does take longer to pre-heat and I got some pulsing with yellow flame initially, but this settled down to a clean burn. And good simmer control, like with white gas. And if soot develops in the silencer, it comes apart for cleaning easily by removing a circlip.
@Tacho D Priming bottle stoves with meths is best practice sure enough and packing a little bottle of the priming alcohol isn’t too much trouble. The issue reported by CCS contributors on the Ti cap has been underburn when simmering has been attempted as HERE.
You can use the small jet for paraffin and diesel too - reduces yellow flames and makes it easier to keep stable flame on part throttle - ok, it reduces maximum power but you may survive that
Stove pulses at the beginning because pre-heating is not sufficient for the amount of the metal that silencer and burner has. Cure could be to add a bit more meths after some of it has burned away. If there is free space over when starting the stove some meths could be poured also over the silencer and that would help to heat up parts for pulseless burning.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding exactly what you’ve recommended;but if the suggestion is to pour additional meths on a still-burning primer (similar to ‘topping up a burning Trangia spirit burner), that practice sounds hazardous.
My experience from different roarer multifuels is that they generally need some additional heating up on part throttle before they work well on full throttle.
I ran something close to around 33-50% kerosene along with 50% white gas and the remainder being charcoal lighter fluid through my silencer successfully using the white gas jet. Unfortunately I drilled out my only kerosene jet for alcohol and Primus seems to be out of service kits at the moment for me to procure another for testing on 100% kerosene. Plenty of heating of the cap with alcohol seems to be the trick.
Most multifuels works well or at least acceptable on kerosene with "white gas jet" - in most cases the multiple jets for different petroleum fuels is about optimizing either power or economy for specific fuels. Alcohol fuels need a very different fuel/air ratio so they are usually impossible to burn with petroleum jetting.
Also as the Omnilite Ti is a multifuel stove, you may be able to get away with using the kerosene jet and some (iso)butane to preheat the stove. I have been using my white gas jet along with my fuel mixes (down to the point that it is majority lighter fluid, which is almost difficult to light like kerosene) and found one of the "easy" ways to start the stove up is to use butane (100% in my case, as there is a pressure difference). I would be careful with the kerosene jet as I haven't tested this myself but the mixture will be very lean, you may have to see if it ignites off or not. I light the stove off in gas feed and then warm it for a few seconds before inverting the canister and closing the valve on the canister side while having the valve on the stove side adjusted so it doesn't flare up from the fluid feed. After some time I have the canister back in gas feed, briefly open the valve and close it and then let the fuel line purge of liquid butane. It takes around the same amount of time or maybe a bit less than alcohol depending on the output setting and I watch to make sure the cap doesn't underburn too aggressively. Afterwards screwing in the liquid fuel canister and lighting off immediately is easy. If the cap isn't fully heated up from that, keeping the valve on the stove side closed up so it doesn't flare or go wild for a little while longer should be sufficient before cranking it up. Doing the above startup procedure with butane I advise putting a pot over the Omnilite Ti, in part because the pot/pan/kettle will force combustion gases against the burner bell and heat it faster.
I may be mistaken as I haven't really used a stop watch to time the pre-burn. But when a glass rope "wick" (I use 1/2" glass rope wound with copper wire to contain it) is used in the pre-burn cup, it seems to burn for quite a bit longer than without. Perhaps the amount of alcohol wicked up into the upper portion of the "wick" accounts for the longer burn. Just an idea, maybe someone without a shop currently being below the freezing point of water can test that out. Stan
I wonder whether the rope sort of meters the priming fuel, so that it burns at a steady rate (and therefore for a longer time), rather then starting slow, then a big rush of flame before dying down rapidly? Best regards, Gunner
