I bought a Punker Alcohol Marine stove this week. It has the galvanized finish. The finish was really rough when I received it. I removed the fuel tank and peered into the fuel inlet of the main tube and it appeared to be blocked. So, after looking at some posts on the forum here I opened up the end cap on the main tube and removed the rusted and falling apart steel brush. This took some effort, but it eventually came out. Given it's sad shape, I considered the options which I found and decided to use the stainless steel scrubbing pad to replace the brush. I cleaned everything up and put it all back together, replacing the valve stem packing and the rear plug seal along the way. I preheated it, lit it up and everything went well. As I watched the flame I expected it to settle down to a nice blue flame, but noticed that it was pulsing and going from blue for a few seconds then back to yellow and continuously cycling like this. I've tried this at low, where it stays mostly blue, but all other settings results in the oscillation between yellow and blue with pulsing at any flame level. It seemed like I put plenty of the steel packing in the generator, however, it acts like it's running a bit rich, but there is no air/fuel mixture adjustment. Anybody else had this issue and, if so, have you found a solution?
I had a dual burner. I used rifle cleaning brushes to replace the original packing. May need to place more in the generator. After, seemed one burner ran better than the other. Duane
I replaced mine with bronze wool. Runs fine. I have noticed mine will pulse if the preheat is not long enough.
If its an orange-ey flame it may just be some remnants of rust/oxidisation burning off. It could also be that is under-fuelling/under-vapourising slightly at full power. May be worth removing the brush and trying to pack it slightly lighter, this would allow a little more fuel to be flowed/vapourised at full throttle. Its a lovely example of a Punker Alec.
Since you have all posted, I tried packing it lighter and and also with more. I also tried reinstalling the falling apart original rusted steel brush. Still, it pulses a lot and the flame is still pretty yellow, regardless of what I used. I may try removing the burner assembly again and try running a pipe cleaner through the tube that wraps around the burner. I may also try replacing the steel scrubbing pad with some rifle cleaning brushes. We'll see. Thanks for the suggestions.
Whatever will work for you, the "packing" stops pulsing. Seems material similar to a course pot scrub brush or a rifle cleaning brush is what is needed, I believe the whole length of the tube needs to be packed. I thought the brushes were more similar to material that was in there, I used two, also had to attach a wire or something to be able to fish them out if needed. Duane
