. Since the 1970s, I've wanted an Optimus 8R. I like the burner-beside-tank configuration. It's way stable. I don't like the weight of the clamshell and the crummy wind-screening that it provides, in terms of its weight-to-function ratio. Anyway, I received this item today, from Ukraine (slava Ukraini!), and I kinda like it. Translation on the instruction guide: "Primus Tourist". I'm like a kid at Christmas, waiting to set up the stove, and maybe open the instruction booklet, and then realize that my knowledge of Cyrillic/Greek from my university days of 4 decades ago may be inadequate. I'll use my knowledge from dozens of uses of my Svea 123 to fire up this stove.
Upon receiving the stove, I noticed that the tank-to-burner tube was set about 7 degrees shy, counterclockwise (when viewed from burner toward tank), from where it should be (burner should be vertical). I.e., the burner wasn't fully threaded into the tank. Some clockwise (inward) force didn't budge it. So, I unthreaded the burner tube from the tank. The wick came out with the burner tube, per the design. The wick looked to be in nice shape, even after 43 years. I noticed enough bluish-greenish-whitish corrosion crud down in the deepest female threads in the tank to prevent the male portion, of the tube, from fully threading in. Using a commercial rust-remover product and a Q-tip, I worked away the crud from the female threads. The wick then went back into the tank, and I threaded in the fuel tube (with burner) and obtained the correct 90-degree relationship between tank and burner (burner vertical). Upon firing up the stove, I saw small flames emerging from the valve stem and the tank cap. The stove came from the seller with three replacement neoprene(?) parts, and I dug into those and replaced the O-ring in the valve stem and the gasket in the fuel cap. I also disassembled the SRV. The tiny neoprene(?) pip and the spring there looked to be in good shape, and squeezing in the new pip seemed to be impossible, and so I reassembled the SRV as is. I gave the stove a standard boil test and got a result of 6.5 minutes. Quite respectable, and about 0.8 min. faster than that of my Svea 123. (“Standard” is as follows: 1.0 liter of water from 21 ºC (70 ºF) to boiling, ambient temperature of 21 ºC, no wind, covered aluminum pot of 5 inches (12.7 cm) diameter, bottom blackened.) I was set back, I think, $90. I gave the seller a 5-star rating on the bay of evil. Hey, the stove was old and used, and there will be corrosion crud and degraded soft parts in an old used stove, and he sent along a set of new soft parts. Here is the stove running after all of the fettling work described above. Comments?
