Good afternoon all, I had my US Army Modern Burner Unit Version 3 (MBU V3) setup to deep-fry outside, so figured I'd grab some pictures and talk about the unit. Certainly, it's not a camp stove unless you are camping with a bunch of people...and it's likely not a classic yet...but it's still very interesting and I figure it's worth an entry. If you have looked around the US Military folder at stoves, you've probably seen several M2 or M2A Burner Units written up with photographs. The M2 runs on gasoline (petrol) and is designed to be installed into the M59 "Range Outfit, Field, Gasoline." From what I understand, the M59 could be used by itself inside a building or tent, or could be used in a portable Mess Kitchen Trailer (MKT). They are a very large stove, barely movable by a single person. I'm not a small guy nor am I a huge muscle-bound man, but it takes some effort for me to move one. The M2A was sometimes called the "M2 Bomb Unit" as the Army had several accidents with them over the years. I believe two were even fatal. That was one driving force for the Army to find something better, the second was the push for "one fuel forward" so they didn't have to logistically supply Motor Gasoline (MOGAS), Aviation Gas (AVGAS), Jet Fuel (JP-4, JP-8, Jet-A), and Diesel. The third was that the M2 was quite complicated to start and operate, you really needed to know what you were doing and pay close attention to the unit! So the Army wanted a stove that would be fueled by Diesel / Jet Fuel, was safer, and easier to operate. Hence, the Army turned to a Canadian company, Teleflex, to design a new stove that was the same footprint of the M2 series and could be used in the M59 range. The result was the Modern Burner Unit (MBU). It was met with rave reviews - it ran Diesel, it was push-button operated, and had many microprocessor-monitored safety sensors. However, it had some issues - one of them being that it couldn't be throttled low enough to keep food warm, so a retrofit kit was introduced to covert the original MBU's into MBU V3's, involving a new fuel/air regulating control. Without further ado, let's get to the pictures! So here's one of mine. In this photo it is running. I bought several of the stoves on the e-place from a surplus dealer a few states over. Only one of them worked right out of the box, but they were sold as "for parts" so that's not a surprise. I managed to get them all running pretty nicely. The MBU runs on 28VDC power, and Teleflex designed / produced a 120 VAC to 28 VDC power supply to power the units. The power converter is able to power something like six MBU's, but I'm only using mine to power a single stove in this picture. My power supply is NOT fully original. On the e-place, while the stoves can be bought for under $100 (2021 prices), the power supplies are very rare, and fetch $400 to $500. I bought this power supply unit for $70 as the seller noted it was "tripping the circuit breaker." Being somewhat handy electrically, I figured it would be something simple that I could fix. Well, turns out that while I did isolate the problem (shorted switching transistors), parts were going to be super expensive. So, I gutted the original board inside, and fitted a surplus Mean Well power supply inside with some 3D printed brackets. While the original supply could deliver something like 27 amps at 28 VDC, mine can only do 21 amps. The MBU draws under 5 amps, so it's not a big deal. I figure at most, I'll power two at once. Here is the data sticker on this unit. This unit was built as an original MBU in May 1999. At some point it was upgraded to a V3 and when this was done, the additional sticker was pasted over the original to indicate the update. Something else that the Army wanted was the ability to refuel the unit without removing it from the M59 Range. So a fitting was provided to the left of the front panel that accepts a quick-disconnect fitting...and the MBU has a "fuel" button on the front panel. In the photo above, it is sucking Diesel fuel from the yellow can into the fuel tank on the stove. It can also be manually fueled by tipping the MBU up on it's left side and filling it from a can with a funnel via a removable fuel tank cap. I do not have the matching M59 Range, nor do I really want one. While the M59 is awesome for what the Army needed it to do, it's not very good at what I need. So in this photo you see my MBU on a wooden stand to get it off the cement patio, plus a stand made from angle iron to support whatever I want to cook on it. Behind it, I've got a small garden tractor wagon tipped up as a wind-screen, as the MBU, designed to be installed and shielded form the wind in the M59 Range, doesn't do good in the wind by itself. In this photo, I've got a cast iron Dutch Over filled with peanut oil as I'm fixin' to fry up some waffle fries (waffle chips in the UK I guess?), some Mozzarella Sticks, and some Chicken Bites (which are like McNuggets but made from whole chicken pieces, not processed meat). This seems like a very "American" high-fat junk-food diet, but I'll note we do this only a few times a year for special occasions. Today is my 48th birthday, so we're celebrating with deep fried foods, YUMMY! "Fixin' " is a Southern US term for "about to do." Some I'm about to fry up some waffle fries, which becomes fixin' to fry up. While I'm not using it to fry in the Dutch Over, I've got a 10 gallon (about 37 liters) pot in which I cook homebrew beer. The MBU is AWESOME for homebrewing, as I use it to heat up about 10 gallons (~37 liters) of water for cleaning purposes before I start to cook my standard 5 gallon batch of beer. It does it quite quickly, as the MBU V3 is somewhere around 50,000 BTU (about 14 kW-hours). That's a lot of heating power! Here is photo of those waffle fries frying in peanut oil. The stove has been given the full beans, and is running wide-open. You can see the fire coming out of the burner tube holes. In the photo it seems pretty tame, but in real life, it's incredible how much fire / heat is being produced by this unit. So, bottom line, it's a very powerful stove that burns a very inexpensive fuel. It's easy to operate and when it is running well, it works great. Diesel fuel in the USA is about $3.50 a gallon at my local station, and five gallons lasts me almost an entire year of homebrewing and the occasional fry-up like this. The alternative is my 50,000 BTU propane burner, which eats a 15 pound cylinder of propane about every three months and costs about $20 to refill. The downside is that it is a very complicated electro-mechanical device. Working on one isn't difficult, the Army Technical Manual (TM) or service manual is available for free, but it uses a LOT of special parts. I don't show it in the photos, but this particular unit had a bad air intake filter, and rather than paying $20 for one on the e-place, I 3D printed my own that uses a washable foam element that is often found on small engines. It also has a problem with the tank-vent solenoid that is stuck in the "refuel" position, which prevents the unit from drawing fuel when burning, but since taking it apart to fix that is pretty complicated, I just put a fitting on the refueling port that allows fresh air to enter the fuel tank. It also needs 28 VDC power, which might be a problem in certain situations. I've got a 120 VAC outlet close by, so no big deal. I also own an M2A that was replaced by the MBU. One of the posters of a reference entry for the M2 series pointed out that while the M2 was more complicated to operate, it can be repaired easily with basic tools...while the MBU...you need a large set of tools. So there you go! The MBU V3. I won't say I'm an expert on them, but I've so far repaired three of them so if anyone has any questions on them, I might be able to help. Thanks much, ben
Thank you Ben. That was an interesting and awesome write-up that that does justice your other long list of skills and fixes.
Rebuilding 3 and getting them to work probably denotes the title of Expert more than most.... I have not even seen 1 until today!
Thanks much all! Glad y'all enjoyed the post. Really won't say I've got many skills...but what I've got is dogged determination! Thanks much, ben
Thanks for all the info Ben. I just bought a complete kitchen Trailer (MKT 99) and want to use it without plug in power or off a truck. I want to hook up batteries and a solar panel and I’m trying to find out how much power one MBU draws so I can configure the system. Do you have any info on this by chance?
Hi @Richard Waters - Oooo, an MKT 99 kitchen trailer - very cool! Would love to see pictures of that. Interestingly...the technical manual (TM 10-7310-281-13&P) for the MBU V3 has no specification for current draw. I can't say I've ever measured the current draw on mine, but at one point I was running mine on a 28 VDC, 4.2 amp maximum rated supply. It started and ran fine. My recollection was that that supply was marginal, but I can't figure out why I thought that? Interestingly...the manual says that no more than 7 MBU's can be operated from one power source. The MBU V3 power supply is rate 26 VDC at 600 watts continuous, 1200 watts for one minute. Doing the maths, 600/7 = 3.3 amps...where 1200/7 = 6.6 amps. So I'd say they use somewhere between 3.3 and 4.2 amps continuous, and perhaps up to 6.6 amps when starting. thanks much, ben
That looks a beast of a stove. Ideal for cooking for a horde of hungry soldiers. Enjoy your birthday fry-up. It's always nice to treat yourself on your birthday.
@gnome - oh yes, they are beasts of a stove...but when you need a ton of heat, they work great! The birthday fry came out great. We had leftovers for quite a bit which was nice. thanks much, ben
Here are sone photos. The trailer came with 6 burners. I bought a few more and trying to see what I can salvage as only 4 work. I’m looking for air and fuel filter parts any anything else that might help get them running.
@Richard Waters - thanks for the photos, that MKT trailer is extremely neat! Hopefully you are able to get all of them working. Out of the four MBU's I've bought, I was able to make three of them run fine with minor repairs that including cleaning dirt out of solenoids, replacing leaking hoses, holding down the START button for an extended length of time (see TM manual) that disables the flame sensor for a few minutes to allow the stove to prime properly. The forth one had something wrong with the air/fuel block that I never could figure out...it would light fine, seem to starve for fuel, flame-out, relight fine, repeating that cycle. The last time I took it apart I dropped several of the pieces and they rolled into the dark corner of the garage to never be seen again...so it's been a parts donor for the other stoves. Air and fuel filters seem to be custom-made parts. I made up a 3D printed air-filter for mine: This is the back-side. In the hex-shaped recess, I glued in the brass fitting removed from a damaged, original, paper-element MBU air filter. (cut away the rubber with a knife) This is the front side. In the cavity I place a circle of foam carburetor air-filter material. My filter material was made by UNI and is used by the motorcycle racing crowd as air filter material, cut into a circle carefully with scissors. Works VERY well. Has less airflow resistance than the stock paper filter, which does cause the stove to run a bit lean, which can fool the flame detector sensor to think it's not running and will cut it off. You can adjust the air-fuel mix, I simply start mine in MEDIUM rate of fire, let it warm up, then crank it up. As the fuel/air block gets warm, I think the Diesel fuel thins out a little bit, making the mixture slightly richer. I want to say mine is printed from PET-G material. It seems to be heat-resistant-enough - while it does appear to have distorted/sagged a little bit from the heat, it still works fine. If I ever make another one, I'll print it in ABS which is a higher temperature material. Occasionally, you'll see the fuel filters on ePay or other auction sites. When my filters plug up, I plan to cut off a few inches of the "fuel dip tube" that goes into the tank, fit a length of fuel-resistant tubing, and use a filter designed to go into a chain saw fuel tank...that is both a pick-up and a filter. Good luck getting all the stoves going! thanks much, ben
very nice! just bought a dozen of these and working a bit on getting them working. 10 of 12 are ok so far. Great for outdoor canning/ pressure cooking. Hog scalding chicken plucking
@Ben Hall hello ben.it is built almost like a central heating forced air+pressurised fuel(8-12 bar) burner. but yes, I agree with military guys: gasoline is dangerous... diesel fuel is used in almost all important areas of interest: trucking,rail locomotives, big ships(mazout too) agriculture,etc... if it really blows 14 kw of heat I suppose it will burn at least 1,5 liters for one hour of cooking! by the way: nice cat here's 3, well two and one male
Interesting. What is 28V 5A used for? It sounds like a lot. Do you get a lot of soot on diesel. I used my Nova+ in Tibet, where I could only get diesel. It burned ok but I got a lot of soot.
At least that Nova+ worked with diesel. there's no way around it: longer carbon chain fuels are difficult to burn. high pressure and lots of air(fan forced or good draft is the only possible way). simplest way is pot type as in Nestor Martin. but you still have to periodically get in there and clean up carbon deposits... a decent compromise if you ask me
The MBUs were fielded at the same time, or just after or before, depending on where you were stationed, that the Army was switching from diesel to JP-8(kerosene basically). An incredibly large burden was relieved from the logistics and property book folks. Humvees were replacing mogas powered Jeeps and Dodge pickups. The handwriting was on the wall for mils-spec lanterns and the M-1950 stove. Desert storm saw the military purchase a LOT of Coleman 550Bs and other commercially available stoves to burn this new mystery fuel that any motor sergeant worth his salt said would ruin every diesel engine in the inventory..... or maybe not.. haha! I think there is plenty of evidence in this community that kerosene can burn pretty clean. I'd avoid diesel if possible. Perhaps a trip to the airport, or your nearest petroleum dealer, for some Jet-A is in order.
Hello Ben, nice writing. I was wondering about the noise level since it seems to use high pressure diesel to achieve 50000BTU? Thanks.
The envy of everyone in the campground! Get everyone lined up, mind your distance for “tactical feeding” and hope they have SOS this morning.
Thanks for the nice comment. For sure, they are not quiet - but I wouldn't say they are loud, either. With my units, the air compressor / blower motor is louder than the burner sound. Somewhere, I've got a sound level meter...I'll see if I can't dig it out and take a measurement the next time I use it.
