Conversion of a Kenyon 206 from Alcohol to Kero issues

Hi guys,
I have a Kenyon 206 cooker on my sailboat that is a lovely little beast that fits perfectly gimbals for cooking while sailing but unfortunately of course takes a forever to actually cook anything.

As a man who likes my coffee, I can't be having any of that so started down the road to switch over to Kero using a pair of Patria 207 burners I scooped up off of Ebay. To that end, I pulled the alcohol burners off, and adapted in the Patrias having to do a little plumbing work to accomplish this of course and now have everything all secured nicely, moving like it should, and not leaking.

However... No matter how long I preheat these burners, I only get hissy gassy big tall orange flames about like what I would expect out of a insufficiently heated burner that is not properly vaporizing fuel.

Here's some pics of the process, hopefully one of you eagle eyed types can spot what I did wrong and point me the right direction.


Original burner next to the replacement Patria


Close up of the top of the Patria


Original configuration top


Original configuration bottom


Facing off random brass thingy out of the sale bin at the hardware store to adapt


Drilling out random cheap brass thingy to thread onto the Patria burner


Threading thingy


Thingy installed


Tubing ran via thingy to burners.


Burner installed


Pumped up checking for leaks

Ok, so what did I miss here?

 

How big are the jets in the Patria burners you have?
You have fuel that much is evident. You have preheated them well.
The only thing it can be is overfuelling then. Find and fit a smaller jet and try again?

 

Hi, ASwayze,

Welcome to CCS! Very nice job of machining the parts to match up, Sir. Well done. A few questions, is I may: How many years did you use your Kenyon? Have you ever had burner problems, before? Regarding your new burners, are there markings on the burner, itself, that indicate it was made in Portugal, or marked "Patria"? The reason I ask, is that it's very easy to swap inner and outer caps, with any old regulated burner you might have. We have seen that, many times, over the years, here at CCS. We found one seller offering "PetroMax" burners, and it turned out that ONLY the inner and outer caps were made in Germany, whilst the burner was made in India, or another such place. Performance with burners such as those, "can be" sketchy, and problematic. So, first thing, check your burners for maker's marks, or other stampings. Next, check your cleaning needle, and make CERTAIN that it's set down where it should be set, and not too high. From the factory, this one spec is quite often "ball-parked" by most manufacturers, both old and new. It's easy to correct, but you should have your needle set down around 4 clicks, and there is abundant information on how to do that, here at CCS. Last, make sure your jet is a proper one for the fuel you are burning. As has been mentioned, if the orifice is the wrong size, you will be hard-pressed to get the stove burner correctly.

Give that stuff a squint, and let us know what you find. Good luck, and God Bless!

Every Good Wish,
Doc

P.S. I have two Patria burners, setup at the Handi Stove Works factory, from Down Under in Australia, and my Handi Stovette works like a champ! Authentic Patria burners are good quality, most of the time, and should offer you excellent performance, and service. FYI.

 

I'm also wondering, not wanting to insult anyone's intelligence, but are you using kerosene? I'm assuming kerosene instead of, say, unleaded gasoline or similar.

Also, have you tried the burner at a lower pressure? I don't think they need that much pressure to work. Maybe 5 to 10 strokes, depending on the efficiency of your pump and the seal of your fuel cap.

One more thing to think about, it seems like some new burners need to burn a small while to break in. I did this with some cheapo India burners, I think they were Liberty brand, and after a short while, say, 10 minutes, they reached a blue burning state, starting with an all-yellow flame. There could also be solvents or other pastes and/or oils in the burner itself that need to burn out. Just a thought on that.

Yeah, there's also the size of the jet. If you have alcohol jets in a kerosene burner, you'll never get a blue flame with kerosene fuel. Kerosene requires a small jet aperture size, like around 0.32 mm or 0.28 mm or thereabouts, while alcohol jets may be upwards of 0.45 mm to allow more fuel through to give you a flame hot enough to cook with.

I have one of these and did an alcohol to kerosene conversion of the jets: Homestrand Mariner Conversion Question

Also, inner and outer caps really do make a difference on how clean they are and the manufacturing. If they are not up to standard and good quality, you'll get less than desired results. Also, make sure they are properly installed and lined up well on the burner.



sam

 

Having done the same thing years ago, I found I had to fill the depression under the burner with meths for a longer preheat time. Heating a kero burner as opposed to a alcohol burner, takes as much as 3 times as long. 206 burners will run at 350 degF, 207 kero burners need 700 degF. Shield from breeze. try to do it in one prime (lots of meths.). Once I changed my priming habits, I had no problems, and still don't. You;ll also find that adding a lighter (a clip-on attachment) to be helpful.

 

Hello Aswayze .
I use meths(alcohol) to clean out old fuel residues and dirt etc... from old kerosene tanks.
I have found that some cleaned out stoves can hiss and not ignite - then ignite the new kerosene gas fuel but burning yellow just as you have described.
It can be annoying but it will generally settle down to burning kerosene well after say a second good preheat first.

Did you make sure that all of the meths had fully evaporated before putting kerosene into the fuel tank? I wonder if that could be your problem.
Cheers, John

 

Hello and welcome,
An impressive 1st post. Other members are better suited to sort this out but I'll join your hopes for good end results. Seeing d spears comment, along those same lines I'll add:
You mentioned " No matter how long I preheat these burners, I only get hissy gassy big tall orange flames about like what I would expect out of a insufficiently heated burner that is not properly vaporizing fuel."

You may have your own answer there [insufficient preheat] are we done here? Glad we could help .
If not can you share how you preheated the burners?

The above comments seem to me along the same lines ie YOU "insufficient" preheat & JonD "overfuelling" & Sam "less pressure".
The kero burners typically have a spirit cup which may better transfer heat directly where it is needed (what u missed?). However, you can get it to work w/o adding those but may eventually consider it to improve your prime.
The other thing re your big tall orange flames is also along the same lines is just basic that many (kero) burners need to start with low flame (less fuel flow) and after the burner gets hotter then gradually increase fuel to get to high.
thx omc

 

Hi,

The last time I ordered some regulated marine burner I was given the choice of alcohol or kerosene. Try finding some kerosene jets because this may take care of all your problems.

 

Thanks for all the prompt responses gents!

I am out on the boat now enjoying an unseasonably nice evening stoveless but not forsaken, I have my trusty Svea 123R up at the car guaranteeing my morning coffee.

To answer the follow up questions:

Jets, I do not know. I'll make myself up a jet fetcher outer tool when I get home and check.

I have had the boat (and by default the stove) since last July. It's a neat little Dawson 26 that I have coveted since seeing "Prodigal" from the Ostar races in the 70s. Initally, I had to change the pump rubber and fuel cap seal to get the stove running but from there it has not missed a beat. No burner issues at all.

My Patria burners came from an eBay seller. I see no markings on the burners themselves, where would they be?

I have not checked the needle set. In retrospect, that's probably wise to check regardless. Once I get my jets out I'll scope that out.

Yes, I am using clean fresh K1 kerosene.

I have tried varying pressure but have seen the same basic behavior regardless.

Goo in the burner is quite likely, these are both new and could have all manner of stuff in them from the manufacturing process.

Similarly, it's quite likely that I didn't get every single bit of alcohol out of the tank.

Perhaps emptying the tank, refilling with fresh and then kicking up the priming time might just get it.

Thanks for the preheater suggestion, i just happen to still have one of those lurking about left over from a long ago ex girlfriend stolen Tilley heater. It's jobless so I am sure it would love to be put to work on the boat!

 

Re preheating:

The flush mount stove has a dished out area under the burner basically at the same location as the spirit cup on the tabletop version. I filled this with alcohol, burned it, then once I got poor vaporizing let it cool, doubled up and tried again with the same result. I do have a Petromax kero stove and an Optimus 199 that I use off and on and either of these would have kicked right over with that amount of preheat. That said, this one is neither a Petromax nor a 199, I'll try a longer preheat and measure the temp with my laser temp probe and see what I am actually accomplishing.

 

Lately, there have been quite a few offerings of new burners, nipples, NRVs and so on. These are made in India. Some are good, others are rubbish. Things like thread sizes seem to be one of the problems. I bought 2 of the regulated burners myself (and a couple unregulated silents & roarers) because I have (a) stove(s) that uses these. So far, I've not yet tested (read: needed) them. It would be a good thing to take them apart, give them a good clean and , most important, check the size of the nipple(jet)!!! To small will give a very weak performance, to large and all you'll get is fire balls.... Size for a kerosene stove should be .32mm, or very close (say, between .28 and .33mm).
All to often people selling these mis use the established and trusted names (like Primus, Patria etc.) to sell low quality stuff.
I hope it all turns out OK for you!

Best regards,

Wim

 

Ok, back to work on this thing after a work trip to Belgium where of all things I was working with a guy named Wim... Don't happen to work for DCH in Hamme do you Wim?

Anyhow, with my jet yoinking tool at hand I pulled the jets out of my burners then broke into my buddy Staggs boat and stole his table top model kero cooker also equipped with Patria burners and lo and behold the jets are not only different, they are significantly different.





Mine are on the left, the ones out of Staggs kero Kenyon are on the right.

I could not get a decent shot down at the orifices but mine are also significantly larger.

So, the obvious answer to me seems to be replace jets and cleaning needles. Does that seem like that would do it to the lot of you as well?

Was this perhaps someones attempt to convert to "convenient" propane? Anyone seen jets like these in a burner like this before?

 

That might be a alcohol jet of Patria burner. It's taller that it will not suck as much air that kero jet does. Hole in jet is bigger as in your original alco burners. "Normal alco" set up for Patria type burners is to use larger jet and a restrictor tube on top of jet to limit the amount of air that is suck to the fuel vapour flow that comes out from the jet. I would think that your jet does same thing.

Try your burners with jets from your friend's stove. Just for testing you don't need cleaning needles so leave them out. They should work ok with shorter jets. If they work on your stove just get new jets and cleaning needles as you were thinking.

 

There's your answer, yes. Weird combination, those jets with those burners but you're probably on the right lines that they're a way to get them to burn LPG - or alcohol (Afterburner's post crossed), plausible too.

Proper jets and needles. Way to go.

 

Hi @Aswayze , I work for a company named SVK, but the place (Hamme) you've been to is next village to where I live! So, you've been less than 5 miles from my home.

 

Small world for sure!

I enjoyed my stay over there even if I was mostly stuck working 10 hours a day every day that I was there.

I have jets and needles on order and as soon as they show up, hopefully that will put this issue to rest and we'll have our cooker rolling again.

I'll post pics once we are in action.

I thank you all for your help.

I'll be back around once I get some of my other hobby stuff out of the way. I have a Coleman Handy Gas Plant that I need to repair. It was in fact a very handy gas plant until it got it's valve damaged a few years back and has been shut away since then.

 

I need some adapters to use my Svea 1915 burners in a meths only Homestrand Mariner stove. Now I know, can't do, as the straight meths burners only are placed different in height than ones that can be switched to either kero or meths.
Duane

 

That is correct, the height is different. I am adding small spacers under to level everything out.

 

@hikerduane Optimus 207 and it's equivalent Primus burner (which model number I don't know) are a bit taller that Patria regulated burner. Maybe Svea 1915 burner is also taller than than Patria burner so maybe height difference to alco burner is bigger than in Aswayze's stove.

 

Aswayze,

Very impressive work.

The jet you removed from your burner looks just like the alcohol jet that was being sold a couple years ago; it was suppose to do away with the need for a restrictor tube when converting a kero to an alcohol burner. Just your luck to get a burner someone else was trying for the opposite conversion. You may be able to get away with the same needle/block, there is a good chance the original one is still in the burner. Did you try Stagg's jet with your stove?