I did some more boil tests, but this time with a windscreen and a heat reflector. Made a huge difference. Ambient temperature: 24F/-5C Elevation: 4600ft/1400m Kettels: porcelain, brass, stainless steel Fuel: Kerosene First I did a boil up of a porcelain kettle with 0.8 litres of ice. I had left it out and let it freeze. Here's the heat reflector windscreen setup. The reflector is part of the ExpressLander VF setup, while the windscreen is courtesy of MSR. The idea will be to snug the windscreen up to the kettle to capture the heat from the stove so that we use as much heat as possible from the tiny ExpressLander burner. I used small clamp-style, paper clip to hold the windscreen closer to the work at hand. The bottom of the windscreen is jaggy enough to allow air in through the bottom. I adjusted the clip for each of the stoves in the informal test. Ready to start cooking. One thing I really like about the ExpressLander is the long fuel line, which is steel braided. The length makes the stove feel safer. MSR stoves seem to have some short fuel lines, requiring extra precautions for thermal conduction safety between the stove and the fuel tank. This fuel line is so long the tank stayed cold all evening. We were able to achieve a boil time of the ice in porcelain kettle of 13 minutes. Not great but considering that we are heating from ice that's not a bad time. Here's the stove at full power. Here's the setup with my stainless kettle and one liter of 45F water. I made sure the windscreen was wrapped but not tight to trap as much heat as possible. With this setup I was able to achieve a time of 8:30 boil time, which is a vast improvement over what it was before. I can live with that. Finally, I used my brass kettle with 1 liter of 45F water, which is how cold the water comes out of the tap in my house. I adjusted the windscreen to trap the heat and was able to achieve a boil time of 7:25, which is even better. I'm glad that the times improved with the use of windscreen and heat reflector. Without them, the time to boil is nearly doubled. Full power is not required to heat anything while you are out on the trail, but using a windscreen with heat reflector vastly improves the efficiency of the stove and cuts down on fuel waste. sam
I also have a Lander stove and was unhappy with the performance on high so I installed the .32mm fuel jet from my Express Spider as a test and cut the boil time almost in half. The simmer did not seem affected at all.
Ken I used Coleman Fuel from from an old 1 gallon can somebody gave me last year. I was also using a 6 cup stainless steel percolater that I use for all my tests to stay consistent.
Sorry to resurrect a very old thread. I just got one of these stoves and so far I feel disappointed, though I suspect it's through my own incompetence rather than the stoves fault. It's my first liquid fuel stove and I'm having a lot of trouble getting the stove to burn really hot. The first time I used it I just lit it and it ran perfectly boiling a litre of water in just shy of five minutes. Now when I try to light it, it never seems to get hot. I have tried so many times, regularly cleaning it (had to clean to jet too as it got blocked) between use and I just can't get it to burn blue. Is there some sort of trick to using a liquid fuel stove like this? As much information as I can: Using unleaded petrol (all I have available) 20-25 pumps from full bottle (a lot more when I've used it a bit) 2/3 second of spray from the jet so get the priming pad soaked. I light the priming pad and leave it for a minute. Turn on the bottle and let it self ignite or light with my lighter. Watch disappointedly as it doesn't get hot. Can anybody help me please? Many thanks.
The thing about unleaded (there's been heated, pun intended, discussion about its use). It's not recommended, but if you use it, you must clean the stove a lot more frequently than using other fuels. I have used kerosene, clean and clear, and have had consistent performance with it. Unleaded has many additives that don't burn at normal temperatures and will clog these burners easily and quickly. You'll have to burn out the generator of these fuels using a heat and quench method to thoroughly clean them out. I'm afraid that the instructions and manuals do not make it clear about the use of unleaded petrol, since every maker, in every country makes it differently. You'll probably have to experiment a little to find a blend that works for you or use Aspen 4t or other White gas that has none of these additives. I, personally, will be sticking to K-1 kerosene with this stove. It burns clean and blue and hot. Thanks, sam
Hi Sam. I took your advice and went out and bought some Kerosene (or Paraffin over here). I bought the the best one too. Well, it certainly smells nicer and isn't as sooty but no luck. I still can't get it to burn blue; what happens is, it primes for 40s-1m as per the instructions and then I light it. The fuel vaporises for a while but obviously , cools reasonably quickly, and the priming cup starts to fill again creating a huge burning fireball. How can I get it hotter before lighting. Do you have a certain technique? Just more info, I'm using the reflector and a wind shield, the wind is reasonably low and the ambient temperature isn't cold. Thanks again.
I've also thought, with all this messing about, the gauze around the pipe above the priming cup has become very sooty. Would that now be cooling down my stove? Sorry to ask so many questions!
Well, it sounds like you are doing the priming correctly. Paraffin would burn hot enough to keep the vaporizer nice and hot. It could be gummed up from the unleaded you used previously, enough so that it will probably require deeper cleaning. You might want to try priming the stove twice and then turning up the burner as high as it will go on kerosene and maybe that will clean things out. It's hard to say. I put a tablespoon of fuel injector cleaner and have had fair results with that. More invasive clean, like heat and quench would probably work. I hope that this would be the case. It could also be a badly clogged jet that's not letting enough fuel out to give a really good flame. By the way, my priming has been one prime for about a minute, which results in really nice blue flames with kerosene. If yours is still fairly new, then maybe it's defective? sam
On your advice, I gave it a proper good cleaning and cleared all the soot out of the stove. Took it to bits completely and it looked almost new again by the time I was done with it! The fuel now flows much more steadily and doesn't leak everywhere creating a fireball (which is good)! I've also found that less pressurising seems to improve it. I still haven't got a bright blue flame but it's definitely improved. I suspect I need it to prime for longer so I will try that and then I will let you know. Thanks for all your advice, I seem to be getting closer!
Still problems. I had the heat reflector, wind shield, primed for over a minute and still not hot enough for a blue flame. Is kerosene usually quite difficult to light in its liquid form? I find getting the priming cup to light far more difficult than when I used petrol. Are you using the standard .28 jet too? Perhaps that would make a difference?
Same jet as for Coleman fuel. It seems to make no difference what fuel I put in, the stove burns both very well. See the second to last thumbnail picture above that shows the jet with printing '2 . 8' on the face of the jet. Could the jet be enlarged by accident from cleaning it? Possible. I'm sure a new jet could be found to test this possibility. Could the stove be defective? That could be too. Could it be badly gummed up from unleaded. Strong possibility. Kerosene is really easy to light in this stove. No problems. Like I mention in the post above, the stove has a hard time simmering with kerosene, so it needs quite a hot flame to maintain blue, which means turning it up high. Other than that, it works very good. sam
Thanks for all your help. I'm happy to say, I seem to have got the hang of it. The stove is burning very hot and cleanly and I'm much happier now. Thanks again for taking the time to help me out.
I just wanted to add for the record that while Primus might have intended this stove to burn multiple fuels in the instructions, mine only contained the .28mm jet and the box was labeled "FOR WHITE GAS". You could also purchase the ETA MF maintenance kit which includes the .32mm, .28mm, and the .22mm fuel jets. in addition to some other small parts like the priming pad. Mike
I recently wrote an email to Primus seeing that the Express Spyder is a variant of the (now discontinued?) ExpressLander VF and found out that the Gravity MF hose is interchangable with it to convert it over into an Express Spyder. The specific hose with a valve is "732910" and it looks like the modern Omnilite Ti hose but the nut diameter is different. The nut can be tightened curiously enough with a MSR tool with the open cutout used to change the jet on Whisperlite Universals due to the flat distance being close enough. Procuring the hose and jets I think is easier than getting the multifuel conversion kit for the Express Spyder when it comes to converting the ExpressLander VF over. A neat way of preventing this specific model from being "obsolete" given that Primus recycled the design for the Express Spyder just minus the multifuel capability. The jets will have to be separately procured for running gases or other fuels which I'm still waiting on given I drilled mine out to run on isopropyl alcohol and of course the pump needs to be the modern Primus type that has the threaded lindal connector but I believe it might be possible to convert the ExpressLander VF's older style of pump by procuring what looks to be a called a "connection valve" which is listed as "734960" on the Primus site given how it looks like the ExpressLander VF's hose end on the pump side but with a lindal thread. I'm going to have to ask Primus when they'll have that in stock to experiment with that later.
