Good morning all, I am having some issues with my stove, and would appreciate some help. I have replaced all seals on the stove. 1. pressure gauge seems to work, but when close to the red line, the SRV will open up and depressurize the tank a bit. I have checked everything in the SRV, and it’s all fine. Maybe the pressure gauge is faulty and is showing less than what the pressure actually is? 2. The quick warm up flame thrower shoots out a stream of kerosene instead of a mist. I’m thinking this has to do with pressure, or it’s missing a complement. 2. When fully open, looks like the flame is lifting off the burner a bit. Not sure about this one? Maybe Tom much pressure? Thank you, William
On my Coleman marine stove with preheater on kero, it only recommends 20? pumps, so maybe your preheater is the same, start low then when opening the main valve, add pressure then. Duane
Hi William, be sure you didn’t overfill the tank. It shouldn’t be filled more than 70-75% of capacity. Nicola
Why not pre heat it the old fashion way and then pump it up ? Like you can do with a lantern. The pressure INDICATOR is not more then that.
I do preheat with alcohol, but would like the preheater to work. The tank is less than 75% full. Probably half. Duane, you’re thinking the preheater needs less pressure to vaporize the fuel to work? Hmmm….
I’ve used my Heinze Geniol stove a lot and have got to know it as an old friend! Unless your tank was overpressurised (sounds like it wasn’t) and the SRV was doing what it should your statement is inherently contradictory William. The SRV has got to be suspect, the compression spring having lost its stiffness or become too short. Or, (and I had this initially) the fuel cap threads are binding and the cap seal isn’t making a good enough seal. A thicker seal resolved it. Empty the tank of fuel, remove it from the stove frame, pressurise it and dunk it in water to pinpoint where exactly the air leak is occurring. A preheater works better (when its working properly) at higher pressure. Make sure two jet orifices are pricked, one admits air near the outlet tip to atomise the fuel coming out of the pre-heater tip. There’s a pricker in the Geniol toolkit fine enough to do the pricking. John
John, what I meant was, the SRV was taken apart and the pip and seal were replaced and everything seemed to be working properly. I will check the spring and try to lengthen it a bit to see if that helps. I was having the same issue with my 199 where the tank was relieving pressure from the SRV, and it took 5 tries to get it where it wouldn’t by playing with the spring. I did prick both jets on the preheater, so maybe it just has to do with the tank pressure not being enough due to the SRV. William
@WilliamH Sounds promising and the experience of your Optimus doing the same suggests success is in prospect. Yes, the pre-heater won’t work well with too low a tank pressure. On occasion when I’ve initiated pre-heat and got distracted and not attended to the stove the air pressure has by then dropped to a level where the pre-heater flame is yellow and smoky rather than blowtorch hot and blue. Atomisation of the fuel has ceased (not enough pressurised air) and the residual air pressure is projecting a weak jet of neat fuel.
No experience with this stove, just my Coleman recommends "X" number of pumps, plus the flame from a match will get blown out, always a challenge to light the preheater. If it doesn't light immediately in an enclosed garage or other area, it stinks badly for a long time from the vaporized kerosene. Duane
I have the experience that the rapid is picky what pressure is applied. So first make sure what the meter indicates (gas lighter can test). Higher then 2bar doesn't work with my lanterns. Make sure that all the holes, air and fuel are clean. I guess the rapid looses air or doesn't let it combine with the fuel.
Greetings, I have stretched out the spring a bit on the SRV and the tank seems to hold pressure much better even when the gauge is at the redline. The preheater is still shooting out a stream of fuel. This makes me believe that the tank might be too full. Any other ideas why the preheater is not getting any air to mix with the fuel? William
I pricked both jets. Where would the air holes be? I’m assuming they would be closer to the top of the inside of the tank. Didn’t see any other holes.
They are in the base that sits in the tank. Then you have the jet on top of that piece and the jet on the top part (nut). https://www.eschaefer.de/hobbys/starkl/px-rest.pdf page 15.
I have gotten my hands on one of these. I can light it with ethanol in the recess below the burner, but am getting nowhere with the prewarmer. I don’t have the liquid kerosene problem mentioned above, there’s a steady hiss of escaping gas from the prewarmer. I finally figured out that as I had only put about 250ml of paraffin in the tank this was just air. I unmounted the prewarmer, cleaned both jets and the fuel filter and put in more fuel. After pumping up to (and beyond) the red line the prewarmer will splutter in to life when I put a flame in front of it but it is not self sustaining. Once I remove the flame it reverts to a hiss of paraffin vapour. I’m thinking that despite the pressure gauge reading it might be a low pressure problem. If that’s the case I see some carbon felt and a bottle of priming alcohol in this stove’s future - life’s too short for all that pumping! …or am I missing some...? -R
Well you need fuel and air in the right combination ;-) On lanterns I have had rapid feed tubes that where loose and pull in false air from the tank. The feedtube (in lanterns) is screwed in. Also I have had split feed tubes. they don't work well either. So check the feed tube and air holes very carefully. To much pressure is also not good.
I’ve cleaned and re-cleaned the various orifices to no avail. This morning however some fresh washers arrived from The Fettlebox. The old washers, whilst very deformed had successfully passed the dunk test. Upon replacing them the prewarmer immediately improved. I was getting some level of sustained burning, albeit with a lot of vapour and a tendency to weep fuel: A few more attempts, building pressure up to just past the red line and I had it running well: I also have a suspicion that less pumping was involved. I’m wondering if the old washer - which looked much like a kugelhopf tin - was causing the manometer to give a false reading. Now all I need to do is figure out why it takes a leisurely 15 minutes to boil a litre of water. -R
The jet turned out to be dirty. It ‘looked’ fairly clean, but the hole looked surprisingly small to my aging eyes and it was a tight squeeze to get a pricker through it. A good clean later and the flame has gone from: to: Boiling a litre has dropped from 15 to 7 minutes. I can probably reduce that further by pressurising the tank a bit more. -R
It's good to see you are getting this beast up and running. Have have the Dutch version of this stove, which is slightly different from the one you have, but these are real workhorses. As indicated by @Petroman , these preheaters are tempremental at best. I added an alcohol cup to mine, which could be had on E-bay. I don't know if they still sell them, but it has eased the use of mine greatly. Just my E0,02 But once fettled up, I have no doubt this stove will serve you well.
