I had a lucky break recently when a colleague gave me a couple of stoves they were clearing out. Amongst them was a lovely little Optimus No96. I duly ordered replacement seals and leather and a with exception of a very tight and troublesome pump leather I had it reassembled without much fuss. I did however stop short of replacing the NRV pip and seal as I wanted to see if the old ones were serviceable. After some fettling it fired into to life, however the pump is very stiff and also leaks out a little fuel when pumping. Im still new to these little paraffin stoves (I’ve got a primus 210 and 96 and a Monitor picnic stove but my other stoves are of the Optimus petrol variety). My question is should I face the music and attempt to replace the NRV components or is this a case of letting the pump seal break in
Also I should have said, I’ve fired it up twice so far. The first time the it leaked from the pump enough to drop as shown in the photo. The second time it fired up much easier and much less fuel cape out, a couple of drops when pumping but not enough to warrant a photo.
My opinion...but you should never have fuel come out the pump. Change the pip in the NRV. Pretty easy...no risk of fires! You will need the tool for it. There are a lot of threads here on how to make one if you dont want to buy one.
A tool to remove the NRV can be purchased online but it is basically a steel rod with a 5mm x 5mm slot in the end. Lots of info here on NRVs and home made tools. Search Results for Query: Nrv | Classic Camp Stoves
I had a go at trying to remove the NRV this evening and unfortunately no success. It looks like someone has had a go before me as the head of the NRV was already quite burred before I got to it. I tried the method I’ve had success with before of placing my NRV rook in a vice, adding a wrap of leather round the body of it to keep it central in the pump tube and lowering the stove over it to apply pressure from above. sadly I only seemed to make things worse! I’m not sure what to do next as I don’t have soldering equipment so removing the pump assembly from the fuel tank isn’t really an option for me. interestingly I tried a couple more test firings the first of which had a small amount of leakage but less than before and the one after that seemed to have none?
Try half filling your pump tube with kerosene, pushing it through the pump valve (to clean the pip surface area), and then see if the leak stops. You could be lucky and have a cork pip that is swelling back into working order, or some small grit on the face of a nitrile pip. Cheers Tony
Yeah if I could say the tool looks a little worn out but not that bad. I don't know man... I've gotten them out with a bolt extractor... Not for the faint of heart
I try to soak the shit out of it with penetration solvent...and wait. Sometimes if it doesn't move on the first try I soak it again and walk away... patience is also key and a good tool
Thanks for all the advise and sorry for the slow reply. I’ll try some of the advised solutions and hope for the best!
