I have recently acquired a 1971 Primus 71. It has 02 1971 stamped on the box so I'm going with it's a 71 71 (Ooh..just realised the date...it's a newly decimal stove!) It's not lighting. After priming and opening the key, I can hear hissing, and some Aspen 4 vapours are clearly coming out because if I keep the lighter on the bell it kinda lights ish. It has actually stayed alight all by itself for a few seconds but then it goes out. Following the advice here I've changed the filler cap seal and the SRV pip. Cleaned and prodded the jet with a 0.16mm acupuncture needle and done the dunk test: not a single bubble. So I am now concluding she needs a new wick. Cotton mop head purchased this morning, just gotta find the vice because that vapouriser tube ain't budging! Obviously, to check it wasn't the brand new bottle of Aspen 4 fuel at fault I had to purchase an Optimus 88 with its little Svea 123R. Seemed the only logical thing to do to assist with the troubleshooting. I think the Svea is about the same age as the 71. Anyway, the Svea quite happily boiled some water for a cup of coffee this morning with the Aspen 4 so I am concluding it's not the fuel. I am, though eyeing up a pretty little brass windshield and legs for it as a thank you present for helping with the fault-finding. It's only polite. There is also an 8R en route because, well, it's a big bottle of Aspen 4 and I hear it only lasts 5 years. Would be a shame for it to go off as it's not cheap! Of course though, stupid me, when I ordered the 8R I had completely forgotten about the Coleman 533 that I have never actually fired because when I bought it 28 years ago I thought used paraffin, and then I read the label and it said to use Coleman Fuel. Which I couldn't find anywhere. So it went on the shelf in the shed where it's been ever since. I now know better. Around the time I got the 71 I did, though, remember that I had a Primus 5 and an Optimus 930 sitting on the shelf where they'd been in all their shiny gloriousness for about 25 years. I decided they needed some love and attention. So I got some brothers and sisters for them. I decided I had quite enough Swedes about the house, and a Yank in the shed, so I thought I'd adopt some Brits! A Buflam No.2 and a Valor Packaway (which rather surprisingly came with a tank full to the brim of paraffin! Not entirely sure the seller had advised the delivery company of this! But at least I know I don't have to do the dunk test!). And for the 930, a Tilley Guardsman (1954-55) in matching shiny Speculum. But then there was that poor little, tiny, orphan Primus 96. It didn't ask to be born Swedish in 1956. So I took pity on it and brought it into the fold too. These all still need a scrub up and check over, but that's all part of the fun of adopting a stove! A few years back, for a while I thought that Trangia was spelled "Pokemon" and that you had to get them all. So I did. Then I discovered that SVEA and Trangia are not the same thing and a whole new world opened up of brass, aluminium and the odd piece of stainless steel Swedish military love. Of course I supported the lads at home too with the BCBs and hexamine. (I do love a Mk1. I feel like I will survive the end of the world with a Mk1 and some meths.) I also discovered a really good way of preventing my cat's Gourmet cat food tins from going into landfill: make Fancy Feast stoves! Save the planet! You know it's the right thing to do! You know you're in trouble when your friend asks: Just how many stoves do you have? And you start trying to qualify what they mean by "stove". Hello, my name is Suzanne and I have stove pox.
One of the tools in the Fettler toolbox is Patience. With a good penetrating oil, not WD-40, Patience works wonders on old threads.
Hello Suzanne, welcome to this forum, where we love watching a blue flame burning away nicely. But get real cranky when it doesn't . Or is that just me? As for your stubborn 71, I can only advise to take it apart and replace the wick. When I had to do that with mine, when I bought it, I had to heat the threads, before it finally gave up. If you put it in a vice make sure you don't twist the head. I had to silver solder the shear that had formed in mine.
Ok...so sitting in a puddle of Plusgas for two weeks seems to have done the biz on the 71 vaporiser threads! The vice and the baby boa (thank you to whoever it was suggested this tool!) worked together marvellously. When I pulled the wick out of the vaporiser it made the sound of a cork coming out of a bottle! From which I concluded it was probably too tightly packed in. So I removed a couple of strands. The wick was still damp and I tried to light one of the removed strands. Nada! Barely took light before going out again (somewhat in contrast to when I experimentally lit the end of a cotton bud that had been used to mop up just a tiny drop of Aspen I'd spilled...). Conclusion: the wick was still full of water from my attempts to heat the tank with hot water to remove the vaporiser, hence the hissing after priming, but no flame. Please bear in mind that I have very little sense of smell, so sniffing the wick doesn't tell me a great deal about what fluid might be making it damp - the absence of a smell of Apsen may not mean there is no Apsen there! The wick itself looked ok: So I put the wick on a radiator for a couple of days to dry thoroughly and then wedged it back up the vaporiser, pulling it back out a couple of millimeters as per the advice here. Screwed the vaporiser back in. I had to consult my original photos to discern where the spindle was originally in relation to the filler cap as "tight enough" appeared to end up with the spindle directly over the filler cap, which seemed an unlikely design! I did a dunk test: no bubbles. I put some Aspen in and let it sit for a couple of days. When it finally stopped raining I took the 71 out and tried it again. Primed it twice just to be sure: And lo, a blue chugging flame (there is a flame in the photo, honest!): Boiled a kettle for coffee. Ah....nice... Took it out again after dark to get a flame shot! It was actually considerably more blue than it looks in the photo. There is the occasional yellow edge to the flame but not a lot. Many thanks to everyone here for all their wisdom and experience, and for taking the time to share it.
My photos of flame shots look like that too. Some times after a wick replacement, it takes a couple firings to get a steady flame for some reason. Duane
