Hello. I bought my first ever paraffin pressure stove, a Meva 1, from ebay for £18.49. I thought that was fair until I put paraffin in it and it dripped out from a crack near one leg (see photos). It's an inch long crack. Can I fix it or should I bin the tank and go back to ebay to try to get a more intact one? I got a couple of paraffin lamps for power cuts and 5 litres of paraffin and was looking at other uses for all of that fuel so I bought a heater, a blowlamp, a wick stove and this. I am a tinkerer, I like your website and this might make a nice hobby for me.
Hi @AvidNerdlinger Welcome to the forum. Meva stoves seem to be prone to stress cracking on account of their thin gauge. Do a search (top right) for "stress crack Meva". There is a thread about using a tank sealer which might effect a cure. Twoberth started a thread about stress cracking on a Radius. which includes some fine pictures of what he found when he tore the tank apart and flattened the sheet out. Definitely worth a read. Tis a shame when you buy in good faith and then such things happen - but most of these stoves were mass produced between 50 and a hundred years ago and have been subjected to heating and cooling, pressurising and depressurising, and cleaning and fettling for lots of their lives. It is also said that ammonia (as found in some Brasso) can also cause stress cracks, so the cherished and polished stoves can still let you down as easily as tatty ones. Regards Dean
Maybe there has been mechanical force to leg and that has caused tank to crack? It could be fixed by cleaning crack area well and applying solder over the crack and hopefully into crack also. It is very difficult to get solder into crack since crack edged are difficult to clean from oxidation that prevents solder to attach. Maybe crack edges could be cleaned with some fine scraper or Dremer type of tool with steel brush of very fine/narrow sanding/grinding disk
You may be able to repair the crack. Clean the tank of fuel both inside and out. Grind a V along the length of the crack. This helps with cleaning and increases the thickness of the solder repair. Use a lead /tin soft solder (often referred to as electrical solder) After filling the crack and vee with solder it can be cleaned up by scraping off the excess. Use wet cloths on nearby soldered parts like the leg, otherwise it could fall off. A stronger alternative is to solder a patch over the crack. Companion Stove / Heater Tank Repair
Welcome @AvidNerdlinger Most anything can be repaired. If this is all you have, you'll still need the additional expense of a set of burner caps before you can light it. The pot support legs look homemade so a set of proper ones will add to the bill. These items will cost as much as you have already spent so the decision is up to you. I have bought many incomplete stoves that others had little love for and brought them back to life and there is a certain satisfaction gained when the result is that perfect blue flame but now I feel it's always best to get one complete and as original as possible and then just go through the normal fettle of gaskets and pump valve pip. I say have patience and look around for a Swedish stove.
Thanks for replies. The crack isn't easy to see in photos but it is parallel to the leg joint less than a mm from the solder so you're probably right. Looking into these stress cracks they seem all too common so perhaps repair might be a better bet than attempting to find a good one on ebay... I'll definitely give soldering a try. I was considering a bid on another ebay Meva but now I'm thinking there might be a stress crack like an oversized forward-slash between "made" and "in Czechoslovakia" on this listing photo:
Ah. Well I hadn't realised it needed burner caps and the legs are irregular and ill-fitting so yes probably homemade, might also have caused the crack like what Afterburner suggested. Still, I'd be interested in attempting to solder it, see if it will hold any pressure, then maybe look out for a better stove...
Sure, If you're handy with a torch go for it. It's always good to practice. I bought an incomplete Meva years ago. Caps were missing and it needed some soldering. It was a good experience getting it going. I was able to get an original outer burner cap from Base Camp UK which was stamped Meva Czechoslovakia. It's a decent running stove and the Czech stamping and general style makes them look foreign and mysterious.
Whenever I have sold stoves online I always include pictures of them alight. It is not a guarantee that it won't be cracked or otherwise leaking, but it goes some way to demonstrate a functional stove, at the time of the pictures at least. You might pay a little more for one like that, but you have more or less seen that it works. On the other hand, when I buy, the last thing I want to see is it demonstrably working .... I have only picked up one with stress cracks - a British Twigg Buflam, but a few Burmos's have had the dreaded stuck NRV. I have probably been lucky. I have had a couple of Mevas and both were fine, but on this site they seem to have a bit of a bad reputation. It's a good learning point about not getting carried away and paying silly money for things that may be incomplete or scrap. I reckon some sellers think stoves are made of gold, judging by their asking prices, but now and again there are rare ones that are sought after.
Hi, inner burner tubes on these Mewa are strangely short, so a common replacement inner cap probably doesn’t fit well. Nicola
Anyway a very lucky crack, straight and close to the leg solder. A repair that will be almost invisible. Just stop the crack making a tiny hole at the end of it with the smallest drill bit you have and then add some flux and melt a piece of lead wire straight over it, it will mix with the leg one and that should be enough. Nicola
Well I asked the ebay seller about the forward-slash crack and he says it's a scratch and he double-checked for leaks for me so I might get that one. I had a go at soldering with a butane soldering iron. My thinking was that these can get way too hot for electronics soldering so it might do the trick but in practice the solder wouldn't flow on the brass, it just smushed into place and I flowed it by taking the tip off and using the flame directly like a pencil torch. Very messy but effective as it stopped any leaking and the stove holds pressure now. I demonstrated to myself the necessity of burner caps by operating it as a blowlamp...
Noted short inners. My repair isn't invisible but I might try to tidy it up in future, I was thinking I could use a pencil torch in one hand to apply heat and an electric soldering iron in the other to touch up the solder...
I got outbid on the other Meva referred to above but I ended up buying an RM picnic stove (£31.67 roarer) for camping and what looks like a 2 pint Svea (£33.50 silent) for power cuts at home. So I am writing off the £18.49 and putting the Meva stuff in the parts bin.
I like the RM stoves and yours looks to be a clean and complete example. The fount to riser joint has a taper thread, so don't get carried away trying to wind it all the way in! Hand tight and a nip with a spanner should be plenty.
@AvidNerdlinger - for your first stove repair, I think you did a great job! Soldering isn't always easy - been doing it for 40+ years myself - and there are soldering jobs that still test my skills (and patience). I've got the following Bens brand stove: Also bought off the ePlace...and I also didn't see anything that gave me any concern in the seller's photos. When I got it unpacked and in some good light, I found a whole mess of stress cracks around the tank: The other two thirds of the tank wall are not quite as bad, but still have some stress cracks. I'm tempted to try and repair it with this two-part epoxy product, which I have on hand, and have used very successfully to repair small engine gasoline / petrol tanks: The trick is going to be keeping the epoxy out of the riser and out of the pump NRV. One trick I've seen done in the past by others is to block off holes during painting is to use those "squishy" ear protection foam plugs. But, I'm not sure I can insert them deeply enough in the pump or the riser to keep them from getting plugged up. I do have some old NRV's, so perhaps I pull the original NRV and install an old one? I could keep the epoxy out of the threads with some grease. But, that leaves the riser. Another idea I had was to put the stove on it's side and rotate it while the epoxy cures - like a piece of meat rotating on a rotisserie spit over a cooking grill. The epoxy would stay (mostly) on the sides where it is needed, and should cure to a relatively constant thickness. The epoxy is fairly strong stuff, but I'd feel a lot better if I could build up a good, thick coating on the walls that are cracked...so rotating it on it's side as it cures would help ensure that the epoxy pools where it is needed. Thanks much, ben
Hi @Ben Hall . See this old post for my views on repair of classic stoves suffering from Stress Corrosion Cracking: Sad tale of Phoebus No.30. Best Regards, Kerophile.
Greetings @kerophile - thanks for the link to your post. Just re-read it again. I've used the POR15 series of products to fix gasoline (petrol) and diesel fuel tanks in the past with good success. Especially after mechanically fixing the defects and just using the POR15 to seal up any remaining small leaks. However, the cured product doesn't have a lot of strength in my opinion. Using it in a stove application, especially under pressure, doesn't seem like a good idea to me. The epoxy does have more strength than the POR15, especially if I can build it up via the "rotating on a spit" method to a thickness of say, 5mm or so. I'm still thinking about what I want to do with this stove. Even if I'm able to repair it with the "rotating on spit epoxy method," I likely will fire it up once to prove to myself that the repair worked, then never use it again due to the uncertainty of the repair...and the fact that I've got a host of other really nice "user quality" stoves that don't have dodgy epoxy tank repairs. Another option would be to turn it into some sort of a lamp. I've thought about putting a 5 or 10 watt LED on top of the burner (perhaps hollowing out the top so the LED is recessed), with the LED facing up, running the wire down inside of holes I drill in the burner, down into the tank, then out the side of the tank if I can manage to fish it thru all that. Perhaps with a rotary power switch connected to the pump handle? Perhaps I get extra-fancy, and put a couple of 18650 batteries in the base to make it rechargeable? The burner is a BENS unit and is still in good shape (stove was low hours) and this would be destructive to the burner, but it can't be a very valuable burner. Or perhaps I replace it with a newly made in India one from the ePlace? Hmmm. Another option would be to use it for parts. There is a Primus 5 on the ePlace at the moment that still is fairly inexpensive and is missing parts. The BENS stove would be a good parts donor for this stove if I'm able to win it. Thanks much, ben
