My orifice was clogged!

[Jeffrey]

My rig for smelting / casting is a propane fired single burner Coleman stove under a two quart stainless steel pot. The other day while trying to cast fishing sinkers, I wasn't getting the heat I was used to.
Picking up and shaking the propane bottle - feels close to empty. Changed the bottle, fired the burner, no better - hmmm. Disconnecting the piping from the burner, an oily, smelly stuff came out. Smelled like propane (odorant?).
Long story short I ended up removing the orifice from the valve assembly and using a torch tip cleaner to remove a chalky substance from the orifice. Everything reassembled, it fired like a champ.
Just wanted to share my problem and its solution with the group.
Happy and safe Fourth guys and gals,
Jeffrey

[dg31872]

I hate it when that happens. But the older I get, the more frequently that it happens.

[Skipper]

That is WAY too much information!

:shock::shock:

[462]

Ouch. Prunes would have been less painful than a torch tip cleaner.

[Dale in Louisiana]

I find that a healthy bowl of All-Bran every other day takes care of clogged orifices here.

(Okay, now that we've got the obvious smart-a**ed comment out of the way. You KNEW it was gonna happen, didn't you?)

The gas generator on a Coleman stove works by vaporizing liquid fuels. Even though the stuff you buy in cans for 'Coleman Fuel' is very well filtered, there is always a tiny bit of various substances that do not vaporize. Over a period of time, this stuff piles up and eventually clogs the orifice.

Now for historical content: The military had 'Coleman' lanterns and single-burner cookstoves. We used 'mogas' (standard gasoline for ground vehicles. 'Avgas ' went in airplanes.) as fuel in those things. They clogged fairly fast compared to a civvy Coleman equipment using 'Coleman Fuel' because automotive gasoline has a lot mor additives that do not vaporize. The Army thoughtfully supplied us with extra gas generators for our lanterns and stoves because they expected them to clog in regular use.

It's just part of life.

dale in Louisiana

[375RUGER]

Have a lot of blowing sand here and if I don't cover the valve it can clog. A flush with action blaster will usually get the crud out.

[gunoil]

My orfice aint clogged, just caint find amything to put it in. Iam about out of lead.

[1Shirt]

Try XLax!
1Shirt!

[DCM]

Too much cheese???????

[Bzcraig]

try xlax!
1shirt!

dude, that was funny, a real screen wetter!

[Nickle]

I find that a healthy bowl of All-Bran every other day takes care of clogged orifices here.

(Okay, now that we've got the obvious smart-a**ed comment out of the way. You KNEW it was gonna happen, didn't you?)

The gas generator on a Coleman stove works by vaporizing liquid fuels. Even though the stuff you buy in cans for 'Coleman Fuel' is very well filtered, there is always a tiny bit of various substances that do not vaporize. Over a period of time, this stuff piles up and eventually clogs the orifice.

Now for historical content: The military had 'Coleman' lanterns and single-burner cookstoves. We used 'mogas' (standard gasoline for ground vehicles. 'Avgas ' went in airplanes.) as fuel in those things. They clogged fairly fast compared to a civvy Coleman equipment using 'Coleman Fuel' because automotive gasoline has a lot mor additives that do not vaporize. The Army thoughtfully supplied us with extra gas generators for our lanterns and stoves because they expected them to clog in regular use.

It's just part of life.

dale in Louisiana

I hear eating baked beans periodically will also reduce clogging requiring serious repair. (I also couldn't resist)

Now, MOGAS stands for "Motor Gasoline" with the Motor portion to differentiate from aviation use.

The Army went to propane lanterns a while back, as they went completely out of the gasoline hauling business. Everything that runs a liquid fuel is set up to use diesel or similar jet fuels, like the usual, JP-8. Propane bottles are a supply item, as regular "1 lb" bottles. We quit using stoves, as MRE's don't require flame to heat, unlike C-rations. MRE's even come with a dry heater that you open up and add water to.

Then again, I retired a year and a half ago, and I can tell you they've made a few changes since then.

[montana_charlie]

The gas generator on a Coleman stove works by vaporizing liquid fuels. Even though the stuff you buy in cans for 'Coleman Fuel' is very well filtered, there is always a tiny bit of various substances that do not vaporize. Over a period of time, this stuff piles up and eventually clogs the orifice.
Is that true regardless of type of fuel?

After all, Jeff said, "The other day while trying to cast fishing sinkers, I wasn't getting the heat I was used to. Picking up and shaking the propane bottle - feels close to empty."

CM

[Dale in Louisiana]

Is that true regardless of type of fuel?

After all, Jeff said, "The other day while trying to cast fishing sinkers, I wasn't getting the heat I was used to. Picking up and shaking the propane bottle - feels close to empty."

CM

I work for a major natural gas player and I can tell you that what comes out of the ground isn't pure methane, the major component of natural gas. We have facilities that take the stuff from out of the ground and strip the heavier (and much more valuable) components. One of those is propane. By the time it gets from the well-head to that little bottle you're holding, it's pretty much devoid of anything non-volatile, so propane shouldn't be a clogging issue.

Nickel:

I figured as much. Mogas was immensely preferable to diesel as a fuel for the box stoves we used to heat our tents, but in an armor battalion in 1975, tanks used diesel (three hundred-plus gallons on board), all the trucks used diesel, and the only thing that used mogas were the jeeps, actually M-151A1's. On particularly cold nights, that five gallon can on the company commander's jeep needed an armed guard.

In Korea in 1969, the balance was in the other direction. The M48A2C tank had a gasoline engine and the three hundred-odd gallons of fuel were all gasoline.

A quart of mogas in that little single burner stove would last for weeks. In the box stove in a tent, five gallons of gasoline would last a few nights and provide enough BTU's to turn the stove cherry red. In the box stove, gasoline burned clean, without soot. Cleaning up a diesel-fueled stove at the end of an exercise was a nasty, sooty, oily mess.

I wish I had one of the little single burner stoves. They were bulletproof, burned any kind of gasoline, and had spare parts to repair them and keep them going. And don't get me started on the lanterns. In the summertime, the heat they put off was bad, but in the winter, they dumped a lot of heat into a closed space where it was mighty welcome.

dale in Louisiana