I have an Optimus 182 range, think I've become a "rangie"

It's like the one in the 1952 brochure on this wonderful site, with the cream enamel. It has a nifty level indicator on the top of each tank. It's missing the "spirit channels" shown on the brochure. I suppose they were loose pipes that ran from the top surface of the range to each spirit cup (I wonder if flames ever shot out of them?). There's just the two holes in the front of the top surface of the range as shown in the picture. No worries though it's not too hard to fill the cups with my new plastic squeeze bottle. Interestingly enough the outer burner caps are steel. I thought these were always brass. They are prime candidates for my electrolytic rust removal bath.

I have fired up the left hand burner, all OK, level indicator working nicely. The right hand side may need a little attention.

If anyone would like to ask any questions, please fire away.

Dave.

Dave,
I have spirit channels on a couple of my stoves. A Valor 55 and a Petromax 100. Seems as though these are on silent burners. The end is crimped on the spirt cup side. The Petromax has a wick on the crimped end. Not sure if the crimp is there to hold in the wick or part of the design to create an upward draft. As the spirt burns out in the cup the channel acts as a wick to funnel a small flame at the burner end. This way you can light the burner without using a match or lighter. They don't work in any type of wind but, in a sheltered area they fire the burner up nicely. You don't have to have them and it seems to be common that these small parts are often lost. Keep an eye out at old antique shops maybe they will appear in the drawer of an old desk etc.

Chuck

I know of an Optimus 535 i can get my hands on.

I think what Dave is referring to is the neat little tube that allows you to fill the spirit cup from a hole in the top of the frame. Without these it can be fiddly to get access. & no - no flames come up the tube!

The priming tube on the 535 is excellent - it doubles as a funnel but is also lined with a strip of wick which gives the pilot light similar to the gizmo Chuch describes.

The tube Dave mentions can be seen on one of the pics on this page
http://www.spiritburner.com/collection_optimus181.htm

Thanks for the link to your pictures. I think I'll have a crack at making a couple of the little blighters - with my new found soldering skills. Excellent picture very descriptive.

Dave.

Make that the left hand burner needs attention. It was the right hand side that I fired up a couple of days ago.

Seems that this stove has been involved in an impact. Both burners seem a little distorted (leaning) towards the front of the stove.

When I was testing the L/H side there was a mysterious fuel leak, I thought the control knob wasn't shutting the fuel off fully, but this wasn't so. And a couple of spirit cups full of kerosene later I discovered that the fuel leak was coming from the top of the burner. There was so much baked-on grime it has taken 2 days of soaking in the household acids and scrubbing to reveal that a tube joint was cracked. I silver soldered it up, and then found that it's opposite number had a small leak too so I have just silver soldered that too. It's sitting in the pickle bath as I type this. It's amazing how pitted the burner assembly is and how much rock-hard grime there was on it, I wonder if it had be run with the two leaks.

Still looking forward to making the spirit channels.

Dave.

Well three silver soldering jobs and much pickling later, I flushed out all the scale and put the burner back together. I filled the tank until the gauge was reading half full and then lit the fire.

There was a bit of a leak at the valve spindle, not too much of a surprise there. But rot my socks if there wasn't a tiny little flame joyfully poking out of one of the vaporising tubes below my silver soldered joint - the pipes are really shot - but I'll patch them up. This little fellow had not shown himself in my blowing into the burner with fingers over the holes while it was under water - fun yesterday. It's back to the brazing hearth tomorrow.......

Dave.

Finally the burner is gas tight, I fired it up and it's a goer. Doesn't even leak at the valve spindle now.

Dave.

I've just commisioned my new and larger electrolytic rust removal bath. It uses 8 lengths of angle iron as anodes, as I had a bit of angle iron left over. They give plenty of line-of-sight coverage. My old set up was smaller and with 4 shorter angle iron anodes powered with my 4 Amp 12V battery charger. I could only do one side of the Optimus 182 pot holders at a time and it drew 1.7 amps.

So I built the new bath, and yes it can do both sides at once at just under the 4 Amps. But, bless the battery charger if it isn't really rated at a continuous 4 amps at all. Afterwards, and in small lettering I noticed it stated 2.5 Amps. At 4 Amps draw it's thermal fuse clicks out when the unit heats up, and cyles on and off seemingly happily. So now I've got the pot holder half out of the cleaning solution, doing half at a time.

The outer flame spreaders have been de-rusted a treat.

Does anyone have any sugestions on the best way to clean up nickel plated brass?

Dave.

Today I made both spirit channels, all copper and hard soldered. I tested them out and they transfer spirit to the spirit cups nicely.

Ross is right, no flames come up the spirit channels when the spirit cups are lit.

Dave

I took the 182 outside tonight (a fine winter's night with no wind) and fired both burners up. Had a brew up too - of course.

I'm loosing a bit of pressure from the L/H filler cap. Think I'll be trying out the O-ring idea in it.

The stove having two tanks requires more attention on the go than the 535 would eh?

Dave.

I wired some resistance wire in between the battery charger and the cathodes. Now I have a happy battery charger with the circuit drawing 2.6 Amps.

Dave.

I have just fitted O-Rings to both filler caps. What a difference they made! No more pressure loss. I didn't realise that there was any pressure loss from the r/h tank until an O-Ring was put in the l/h filler cap. The l/h burner then so outperformed the r/h burner that I converted it to an O-ring too.

5/8" ID by 1/8" wall section is the size I chose. This size fits a variety of standard sized filler caps. I recommend 'em.

Dave.

I thought the burner was fixed, but, over a few days of leaving the burner unused the whole surface became wet with kero, starting at the top and progressing downwards.

Finally at 11pm Sunday night after a quick test firing I was satisfied that it was fixed -hopefully. I nearly gave up. Then I remembered "never, ever, give up" so I didn't. On and off I'd been working on the burner for the previous week.

I've got quite adept at removing the burner, removing the jet, removing the cleaning needle, removing the spindle, burning off the liquid kero, pickling the burner in acid, rinsing it, drying it off, fluxing it, brazing it, pickling it, rinsing it, drying it off, testing it, etc. etc. It still beats watching T.V. though eh?

In the end I've silver soldered nearly every brazed joint above the control valve body. I've also wiped silver solder over the entire underside of the burner up until the large circular brazed joint including this joint - the source of the last leak. I think I've added quite a bit of value to the burner as far as silver is concerned.

I was surprised how deep some of the pits in the undersde of the burner were. Especially when I dug out a piece of original Optimus flux.

It's quite a vicious circle repairing an old burner, as everytime you heat and quench it more leaks are sure to appear, as you strip away all the dirt and carbon off the burner. And then of course you can always re-melt a repaired joint and it goes back to it's unrepaired state.

Dave.

When I fired up the R/H burner again I found a cheeky little flame winking out of the short vaporising tube that leads down to the front of the control valve. I decided to do the complete fix this time silver soldering all the likely trouble spots in one hit. As I have found that more little leaks occur after each heating a quenching.

It's fixed now and is running well. I'm going to tackle the frame next. I've had some paint matched by a local auto paint place.

Dave.