$20 Fire Maple “Spark” wind-resistant remote canister stove from NextAdventure

Remote canister, yes, but not remote inverted.
Heavy at 305 g.
FireMaple stove, usually well-made.

Cheers

I used one for car camping. The legs seized and were difficult to close. Terrible stove really.

@Dale

Siezed? Did you try a little silicone grease on the pivots? I think it can take a higher temp than ordinary grease, but I might be wrong. Of maybe graphite grease or graphite powder?

My previous comment that it could not take an inverted canister might be wrong. Close examination suggests it does have some sort of preheat tube or heat shunt – maybe.

Cheers

I was in Mesa Verde and far from any source of silicone grease. I’ve used a lot of stoves and have excellent mechanical skills. Just a bad design and quality control IMHO.

I replaced it with a used Primus Omnifuel which isn’t a fair comparison, but it pays to pay for a stove I think.

If you still have it, could it be worthwhile giving it some TLC?

Cheers

I still have it and may make a rainy day project of it. I’m pretty much disgusted with it and don’t need the trouble. I have 4 other stoves.

This one was purchased with road trips in mind. I wanted something stable that would handle larger pots while being compact and easy to set up. I have a car travel kitchen that all fits in a tote bag and under a sleeping platform in my RAV4.

Last September we did a 3400 mile loop through the Western US and staying in motels B&B’s and campgrounds.

I really like this stove.  And, surprisingly, I can use it with an inverted canister.  I cannot explain this, but it works.  The stove is a tad heavy, but the the design is superior, as the burner is both concave and fully shielded in such a way that it boils very fast in the wind.  I find Fire Maple stoves to be generally well built, and this stove is no exception.  At 26 dollars, it is an incredibly good deal.  Perhaps someone can explain to me why this stove works with an inverted canister when it lacks the ‘necessary’ generator tube, etc.  It also simmers better than any stove I have ever used (20 year career as a Mountain Guide).  The ‘dome’ with the holes in it that covers the burner glows red-hot with a very low flame and this appears to provide a much lower simmer than what you can get with just a low flame.  In fact, at the lowest setting, I cannot see a flame at all, but the red glow is there and is ‘warming’ the pot.  Fire Maple has come up with an original design here that I really like.

Interesting. And with the benefit of field observation. that it works.
I don’t think it has an actual pipe or reheat tube over the top, but it does have two other features.
The first is the glowing bright orange burner: that is really hot.
The second feature is the pair of rods going from the burner head down to the solid bottom orange ‘puck’.

We know that a reheat tube is NOT needed with a canister stove if other things are designed properly: I will quote my winter stoves as proof of this. What my stoves have is a ‘Heat Shunt’ running from the flames down to the fuel inlet. The HS provides enough heat to vaporise the incoming liquid fuel.

I suggest that the two rods on the Spark, probably brass, are also acting as heat shunt, conducting heat from the burner head (glowing) down to the fuel inlet. If Karl says it works, then this may be the how or why.

Cheers

Thanks Roger!  The heat shunt concept seems to me like a real advance over, say, the old Optimus or Phoebus liquid fuel stoves which do ‘shunt heat’, but not by explicit design, if you know what I mean…

Hi Karl

The thing to remember is the difference in boiling points. Kero needs to be taken up to about 200 C to vaporise. Butane boils at 0 C and propane boils below -40 C. Their needs are very different.

Cheers

With all of the nerds on Backpackinglight, why would you need to spend $20 for a car camping stove?  Most of you already have a plethora of gear (including stoves) that you could use.  Just an observation.

I use the Fire Maple ‘Spark’ stove for ski mountaineering– it is not that heavy, and it outperforms my other stoves.