Hello stove friends! First post and hopefully not the last! I bought an Optimus 80 at the carboot but can't get the thing to work. There is no flow of petrol from the chamber. I have taken the jet out which is fine. I unscrewed the key and removed the regulator shaft but that does not do much. Any clues as to how to service this simple object? I also have a Primus 76 which works well and a Coleman 500 which has not been fired yet. Yhese I got off my grand father. Looking forward to some clues on the Optimus 80. Cheers Ed
Hi Ed welcome to CCs first of all is the filler cap washer sound if so what condition is the cotton wick a lot of campers have used ordinary petrol leaded or unleaded in these stoves they have aditives in which are not good for stoves they realy block the wick stopping the flow of fuel to the burner is the wick carbonized also you can get build up of carbon in tube/burner beyond the jet i had this problem with my optimus80 or the primus71 i cant rember which and after that was cleaned out it worked pefectly . how i cleaned it out was by taking the burner out of the font removing the jet wick and regulator screw it was then heated with a blow lamp till cherry red then quenched in water (heat and quench method) this was reapeted several times i allso blew down the pick up tube covering the hole where the regulator is screwed in it must have taken about 10 times heating and quenching till it was cleaned through
Brian is right, perhaps the wick in the burner has charred or goo from petrol additives has accumulated in the wick thereby blocking the flow of fuel. 100 percent cotton mop is used to replace the wick. There are lots of tutorials and topics on how this is done on 123's, R variant, 71's etc as they use the same principle of wicking the fuel up to the burner and it is not that difficult. Ron
Last winter before they posted about the heat and quench, I ran a couple pieces of DC electrical wire up the vaporizer on my 123's, worked better on one then it did the other. I put a little bend at the end so it could dig into the carbon. I was able then to suck and got some air movement thru then. On the one that this didn't help much on, after it sat a few months, I fired it up again and it ran fine for some reason. On one of mine, it also had a piece of fine brass screen in front of the wick which helps with vaporizing the fuel. I replaced the wick on both, they were charred a little. I was unable to pull the wick out of one, there is a wire the cotton wick is wrapped in I believe to help insert/remove I belive, for some reason it was really stuck in there. I used a drill to extract it which is how I found out about the brass screen. I looked at the material the drill brought out and it was fine wick material, definitely charred wick.
Thanks for the tips, looks like i need to remove the whole assembly from the petrol chamber. Have looked for some info and it looks straight forward. Hopefully the problem will become obvious on dismantling the wick. I'll keep the post updated on how I get on. Many thanks Ed
Your welcome sdz and as Ron said a 100% cotton mop is used one strand is needed will look forward to the up date and seeing it fettled and working
Just a quick update - My Optimus 80 seems to thread straight into the petrol chamber and on trying to unscrew it it felt like the whole thing would rather bend than unscrew. Hence I chickened out of using force. Would heat and WD40 be a good idea? Can this all go wrong easily? After a disappointing start at unscrewing I thought I would give it a bit of heat on the chamber and re light it. Excitingly it worked. The only concern was that the roar was not a consistent roar but had a rapid phut phut sound. Is this a symptom of poor service or is it normal? Thanks again Ed
I've got two 80s - the first two stoves I bought and now but a small part of my ever growing collection so, be warned, stoves are addictive. :smile: One burns perfectly with a constant roar while the other has the regular phut phut sound which, I'm sorry to say, I find annoying. When I asked about this I was advised to check the wick but, unfortunately, the 'phutter' also has a stuck burner/tank joint and I’d been too nervous of creasing the tank if I used the brute force applicator so left it alone. This though is dumb as a stove that doesn't work - particularly an 80 which is my preferred bike camping stove - is of little use to me so I'll have another, but more serious, attempt at unscrewing it. Wish me luck. Cheers, John
edz, The wick can completely dry out on a stove like this that has not been used in a while, and left empty. After filling with fuel you need to give it a while for the wick to saturate. Inverting the stove may help. Anyhow, if that was the situation, it could be the reason you did not get action the first time around. The puttering sound is common, and varies from stove to stove for some reason -- and it may change with more use.
