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Stove Maintenance

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Roger Caffin BPL Member
PostedJun 2, 2009 at 3:08 pm

We have received this query from a Reader, and because it is very relevant I thought I would address it here in the Forum rather than in a PM.


I will outline my gear query.

We have very heavily used a Vargo Ti gas cannister stove for about 2 years (actually bought direct from Vargo by mail order).
The stove began to die as if insufficient gas. I have fixed this problem a few times over the years by simply hard blowing/sucking with the open regulator open. This only partially worked with the Vargo Ti & eventually not at all. I have used this technique on other stoves for other people mid trip.

At home I remove the jet – easy. It looked ropey.

So I tried to buy a new jet with no success. Vargo did not answer my request to buy a new jet. It must be the same jet as used in Kovea titanium stoves as basic stoves are identical ie must be millions around.

Q 1 – does any one have clogging jet problems for gas camping stoves & what do they do about it.

Q 2 – do people manage to buy new jets. I note the jet for MSR Pocket Rocket is different although also simple to remove.

I used an old Optimus hand pricker to push a big lump of cotton wool type gunk out of the jet body – clearly the source of the clog. A friend suggests this may be a jet internal filter of some sort.

Q 3 – comments welcome on this clog problem. In the interim, I was forced to buy a new stove.

Lou Darveniza

Roger Caffin BPL Member
PostedJun 2, 2009 at 3:21 pm

> It must be the same jet as used in Kovea titanium stoves
Yep. The Vargo Jet-Ti is ‘rather similar’ to the KB0101 and KB0707 stoves. (‘Rather similar’ could be spelt ‘identical’.)

> Q 1 – does any one have clogging jet problems for gas camping stoves & what do they do about it.
Yep. In fact, we have an entire article about this very subject, Essential Stove Maintenance.

> Q 2 – do people manage to buy new jets.
Not easily for canister stoves. You can get spare jets for gas lanterns from Primus, and some white gas stove maintenance kits include spare jets, but while the threads may be the same (M4.5×0.5) the jet size may/will be wrong. I do NOT recommend mixing brands.

> I used an old Optimus hand pricker to push a big lump of cotton wool type gunk out
> of the jet body – clearly the source of the clog. A friend suggests this may be
> a jet internal filter of some sort.
The friend was right: it is a pre-filter. However, the prefilter can get blocked over time if it has to block a lot of gungy stuff. Some jets have a gauze pre-filter instead – the same applies. It is all in the article.

Personally, I am not sure about pre-filters. They can get blocked with ‘gunge’ which could well fly through the jet. I doubt that the canisters have any large particles in them. Sometimes I think it would be better to have no pre-filter and to just clean the jet occasionally.

However, I suspect the vendors don’t like asking the owners of canister stoves to do any maintenance like this. But then, such maintenance is cheerfully expected of the the owner of a white gas stove …

Cheers

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