I got an MSR RapidFire off ebay recently. For those of you not familiar, the RapidFire was basically a Whisperlite set up to run on canister gas. You can see pictures here at the reference gallery. When I got it it was burning with the flame pattern below... not good! After thoroughly going through the stove I found that the issue was the jet, which is surprising for a canister stove. I actually had a replacement jet, installed it, and now the stove is working great... but I have no idea why that did the trick. The size and color of the flames in the picture suggests to me that it's fuel rich, the likely cause of which would normally be a worn jet. I inspected the original jet, and if anything, the orifice was actually a little tighter than the replacement. 0.30mm vs. 0.31mm on the good one. I did some leak testing by submerging the fuel line assembly and there is no fuel leak around the jet. I swapped the jets back and forth a few times to confirm the results... Good strong blue flames with the 'new' jet, burning like a gas-log fireplace with the original. I'm baffled. The original jet appears to be just fine but the stove performance with it is terrible. Any idea how that could be? Any ideas on what could be the key difference between the jets? Any idea how to repair the original jet? Thanks!
You have excellent luck with stoves. 123R with threads all the way into the tank. Creativity with Dragonfly jets on an XGK II. Rapidfire not burning right.
I thought that might be a possibility. I looked for the telltale little flames around the jet while the stove was running and I didn't see any. Still thinking that a leak around the jet would explain the bad performance, I removed the whole fuel line assembly, submerged it in water, pressurized it with fuel, and with a gloved finger over the jet orifice looked for bubbles. Nothing was leaking from around the jet.
I checked and there weren't any. Just to be sure I polished the sealing surface on the just and put it back together with a thin coating of anti-seize.
