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Orange thingy on JB sol ti


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  • #1286119
    chris smead
    BPL Member

    @hamsterfish

    Locale: San Jose, CA

    I see there's a bunch of jetboil hacks out there, but has anyone successfully removed that orange plasticky thing from the stove portion of the jetboil sol ti?

    Pics would be nice.

    Thx!

    #1843967
     
    BPL Member

    @rememberthelorax

    I did.

    Jetboil Sol Ti Stove w/o Orange Base

    Jetboil Sol Ti Stove Orange Base

    #1843968
    chris smead
    BPL Member

    @hamsterfish

    Locale: San Jose, CA

    Thanks John! Only on BPL can I get this kinda thing within 5 minutes !

    #1843970
    chris smead
    BPL Member

    @hamsterfish

    Locale: San Jose, CA

    No big deal on the starter, but is the thing still structurally intact? Did you have to cut it?

    #1843976
     
    BPL Member

    @rememberthelorax

    Totally and completely still usable.

    You just pull the wire pin, and the stove part itself has two pieces that pull apart and the stupid heavy orange thing comes right off (you have to slightly bend the striker at the top, but it does *not* break it or anything).

    Two more photos for ya:

    Jetboil Sol Ti Stove, Taken Apart

    Jetboil Sol Ti Stove Orange Base, Close Up

    As you can see in these two photos, zero broken plastic or metal.

    There is a slight "wabble" in the stove because the stupid heavy orange plastic usually keeps everything nice and crazy tight, but I have used it a lot since I took mine off. Pots on top of it are totally stable.

    If you have seen videos on youtube about the JB Sol Ti it was probably me. I was the idiot who went rambling on for two videos about how it was too heavy. here and here. Not my finest videos ever and I sounded like a doofus going on about their weight, but after ripping off that stupid plastic part, this actually does become a rather impressive UL stove!

    By removing that stupid heavy plastic orange thing you will save an additional 0.70 ounces. Than, throw the stupid lid in the trash, and the stupid plastic cup on the bottom, than cut that beyond stupid black plastic "handle" (disclaimer: Jetboil has repeated contacted me to not call the "handle" and "handle", but I will keep calling it a handle, because calling it a "secure strap" is just about the stupidest thing ever… what the hell is a "secure strap" if its not a "handle" – rant over), than cut the insulating cozy to half of its height (you really do not need it that tall just to hold onto it) and you got yourself one crazy fast and efficient stove!

    John B. Abela
    HikeLighter.Com

    #1844001
    chris smead
    BPL Member

    @hamsterfish

    Locale: San Jose, CA

    Thanks again John that's exactly what I was looking for. I'll check out your videos now.

    #1844059
    Stephen Barber
    BPL Member

    @grampa

    Locale: SoCal

    Very nice, John! Thanks!

    #1844190
    Chris S
    BPL Member

    @bigsea

    Locale: Truckee, CA

    John, Thanks from breaking that down. What was the final weight after getting rid of all the stupid stuff? Did you replace the lid with foil or something or just no lid at all?

    #1844202
    Gary Dunckel
    BPL Member

    @zia-grill-guy

    Locale: Boulder

    John, you are my new favorite gear-mod hero!

    #1844301
     
    BPL Member

    @rememberthelorax

    Thanks guys!


    @Chris
    ,

    It is possible to get it right at the 6.9 – 7.4 ounce mark depending on how aggressive you get with whacking stuff off. Probably safe to round it off at 7 ounces.

    Compare that to the 6.1 – 6.6 ounces for a Soto OD-1R (which I use for comparison as it too, like the new JT, has a regulator) and the every popular thru-hike loved MSR Titan Kettle.

    So for another ounce you are getting amazingly better performance and fuel efficiency and faster boil times. As has been well documented both here at BPL and elsewhere.

    I was going to do a final "Part 3" video but a couple weeks ago my Jetboil went completely and totally ballistic on me. While not exactly the same situation as this failure (somebody elses video) mine had the same exact thing happen to the pot. I had tap water and a half-cube of beef bullion inside of the pot and than the whole thing light up like a rocket taking off.

    Until I can get a new pot back from JetBoil I cannot give an accurate weight on my setup, but once I do get a new pot, I will do up a video on all of my little mods.

    Here are two photos of what my destroyed looks like:

    Jetboil Sol Ti, Pot Failure

    Jetboil Sol Ti, Pot Failure

    #1844390
    chris smead
    BPL Member

    @hamsterfish

    Locale: San Jose, CA

    Should I be worried about trusting this thing on a long trip?

    #1844394
    Phillip Colelli
    Spectator

    @pdcolelli42

    Locale: AT, follow@ www.thruperspective.com

    Glad I got rid of that thing when I did…

    From watching the video it sounds like his flux ring popped off from the shock from hot to cold temps when he took the pot off the stove. Was yours like that? Or from what you wrote it sounds like your stove flared up or something and it looks like the flux ring melted?

    #1844410
     
    BPL Member

    @rememberthelorax

    Hey Chris/Phillip,

    Sigh, that is one of those questions that scares me. Honestly, I mean that. The words "sigh" and "scare" are one and the same on this question, because I have been asking myself since this happened.

    I called JetBoil after I got home from the trip. I am not going to go into verbatium of the entire phone call (but I will part of it below) and what all was discussed, but I got the answers I was looking for, even though I had to push the very nice lady on the phone a bit harder than I would have liked to in order to get what I felt like where honest answers about this issue.

    At first I thought I was one of the "rare few" but since posting on youtube about this problem other people are starting to pop-up here and there having this same issue.

    Now I will give Jetboil the fact that some of these people are probably straight up trying to cook food inside of it (which is clearly against warranty, because this is what happens) but there are enough people with their Sol Ti going up in flames that it concerns *me*. Some of them I trust enough to know that they, like myself, are using it well within the means that it was designed to do – which is to boil water, not cook a 5 course trail dinner inside of it.

    Now JetBoil did offer me a RA# (I have to pay for shipping to them) but I have not mailed mine in yet. I have not because I am not sure I trust this thing to have another one. They also offered to sell me a new pot at-cost or send mine in for "review". In the end, I suspect (could be wrong) that they would probably charge me for a whole new pot.

    Mine had water (not cold, not frozen, not nice, not snow, just water from my platty) and a half-cube of beef bullion inside of it when it went ballistic.

    When mine went up I was not next to the Jetboil. I had stepped away (thankfully) to hang my platty. I looked over at my jetboil and all I saw was this massive flame. The flames were probably three feet in the air. I ran over and dumped the last of my water on it (and thus went that night and the next morning w/o water) and when everything cooled down, there was evidences of some serious super heating. The little 'flux rings' ended up super heating and they were just going ballistic. The flux ring material got so hot that it started dripping down onto the ground (which did not go out when my threw my water on it, that stuff was crazy hot) and the drops of super heated metal were all over the canister – which scared me the most. A few of them actually melted/welded onto the canister of gas. The stupid orange thing was completely melted (I had to take a dremel to cut it off when I got back home – which is where I learned how easy it was to take them off). The bottom of the pot (not the flux, the bottom) as you can see in the photos above suffered major heat damage – and remember, titanium has a melting point of 3034(F).

    So when I got home I put a *lot* of thought into what happened. I spent hours over two nights taking it apart trying to figure out where the problem started. After all, Ti is not suppose to melt at these temperatures.

    So when I called JetBoil I asked them about this. I asked 'The pot is Titanium right?' "yes" was the answer. "Ok, than how can it melt?" To which I got some canned answer in an attempt to take me off-topic (sadly). I let her keep going down that road, but brought back the issue. "If Titanium melts at 3000+ degrees, is the flux-ring Titanium?" was my follow-up question. The response to that was "The Sol Ti" is a Titanium pot". Hmm, did not really answer the question. So I asked it again… "is the sol ti flux ring titanium?" To which I got a direct answer, "Yes". Ok, follow up question to that was "Is this issue happening because of the thinness of the flux-ring?" (I honestly did figure this was the problem!!). The response to that was "No". Ok, that stumped me for a few microseconds. My final question to the very nice lady was "If the pot is Titanium and it melts at over 3000 degrees, and you are indicating that the flux-ring thinness does not cause the problems, that means there is only one thing left it could be (based on sound reason, and the previously discuss with her that the issue is not the stove unit itself), and that is the weld-points that weld the flux-ring & attachment assembly into the bottom of the Titanium pot. Is that what is causing the issue?" The response I got to that was, "there might be an issue with the material being used to weld those two parts of the pot together." And from there the answers to the questions pretty much stopped. (not being critical of the very nice lady, she answered questions above and beyond what she probably should have, and I hope I do not get her in trouble for sharing all of this, but it is *beyond* apparent that JetBoil is having a serious (and I do mean serious… the level of heat and flames produced when this happens could easily burn somebody if they are standing right next to it and cause a serious wild fire, as the super heated material just does not go out when you throw water on it). If it was just me I would say it was a one-off problem, but with the reports that are coming in from fellow youtubers, I guess to finalize my answer to your question… yeah, clearly there is an issue here that needs to be address in the production of these things. I do have three of them (sold the one I did my youtube videos with) and the other two have worked perfectly without problem. I gotta be honest though, it does put a bit of fear in the back of my mind when I think about grabbing it and throwing it into my backpack. No other piece of gear in my house am I not 100% sure of, but not so with this. Which just really sucks, because I freaking love this new JetBoil. Is so amazingly fast, its so amazingly efficient, and it packs up so well.

    Anyway that is my story – told for the first time.

    John B. Abela
    HikeLighter.Com

    #1844418
    Phillip Colelli
    Spectator

    @pdcolelli42

    Locale: AT, follow@ www.thruperspective.com

    Wow, I got chills just reading that. So it sounds as if they may try to pin it on you… but from the questions the lady did answer she put JB to blame. I sure hope this all gets worked out for you. I feel like this should be some kind of product recall or something, that's seriously dangerous!

    Wouldn't happened to have bought it at REI would you?

    #1844458
    Chad “Stick” Poindexter
    BPL Member

    @stick

    Locale: Southeast USA

    John, according to your conversation with the nice lady, she told you that the actual Flux Ring was also made of Titanium…however I felt like I was under the impression that the flux ring even on the Ti version was actually aluminum. I wasn't sure why I thought this or where I had come across this so I did some looking.

    All of the product information is upstairs in my attic somewhere so I went to the Jetboil site to poke around. I went to the Jetboil Sol Ti page, then Resources and then the quick start guide…and there it was…the first sentence of the Quick Start guide for the Sol Titanium:

    "If used without care in certain situations the aluminum Fluxring may overheat, damaging the cup and reducing the performance of the system."

    Here is the link (if it works correctly):

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/JetBoil/Sol-TI-QuickStartfor-web.pdf

    I had received one of the Jetboil Sol Ti systems in the past from BackpackGearTest for review.

    http://www.backpackgeartest.org/reviews/Cook%20Gear/Stoves/Jetboil%20Sol%20Ti%20Advanced%20Cooking%20System/Test%20Report%20by%20Chad%20G%20Poindexter/

    When I recieved the system I did an initial boil at home with 2 cups of room temp water. After this first burn I noticed some discoloration to the bottom of the cookpot. As well, I was able to see the spots where the Fluxring was attached to the bottom of the pot from the inside of the pot. Here are pictures:

    Fluxring on the inside

    discoloration on bottom

    The system still worked fine after this. There were no loose points anywhere along the Fluxring, but just to be sure, I contacted Jetboil via email. They were quick to respond and helpful. Here is the response that I got:

    "Thank you for your email. To answer your questions, the interior discoloration doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. It happens from boiling water, and our testing shows it is not a problem. With these systems as you have likely see they heat up very quickly and if you are cooking anything that is not water you will have to stir constantly and vigorously to prevent damage to the cup and you meal. As for the exterior discoloration, not sure of the exact reason why this might occur. Have you ever put the cup on the burner without water in it, or have you cooked a non-liquid food in the cup before?"

    So, I continued to use the system and to date have not experienced any problems out of it what-so-ever…however, I don't ever use it anymore either (I like my alky stoves). I let a friend use it on a recent 4 day hike and he went through just over a small canister with it and experienced no troubles.

    But this does certainly make me wonder. I have been toying with it all day…and thanks to John's post on how easy it was to remove the orange piece it has been fun…but it may be scary to use now…

    I am also curious as to what the Fluxring is actually made of. According to the nice lady it is ti…but according to the Quick Start instructions it is aluminum. So, did the lady just tell John what she thought he wanted to hear, or are the instructions generic (even though it only says Titanium…not Aluminum)?

    If it is aluminum, how well does aluminum weld to titanium? Would that be an issue?

    #1844473
    Phillip Colelli
    Spectator

    @pdcolelli42

    Locale: AT, follow@ www.thruperspective.com

    Well I suppose if it was titanium in would discolor fro the heat right? What I mean by that is when heated titanium rainbows over right? I no longer have my sol titanium pot but I don't recall the flux ring rainbowing. I would think that that thin of titanium and the extreme heat from the burner would cause this right? I have titanium on my ti-tri and it rainbowed and even glows red hot from just a wood fire.

    #1844500
    Aaron
    BPL Member

    @aaronufl

    In contrast, I've used my Jetboil sol (aluminum) on my Colorado Trai thru hike, a 4 day trip through Zion, 1 week in Canyonlands, and through the Wonderland Trail and have had no problems whatsoever. Efficient, packs down easily, and no stove related fireballs of doom.

    #1844501
    David Lutz
    Member

    @davidlutz

    Locale: Bay Area

    Maybe the water boiled off completely and the thing went all China Syndrome on you.

    #1844520
    Nigel Healy
    Member

    @nigelhealy

    Locale: San Francisco bay area

    John isn't this the reason to go Alcohol, its hard to have China Syndrome?

    Also puzzling, the Jetboil's defining feature is in its name, it boils water fast, so why would you be doing anything else after you ignited? You have hardly any time to anyway and the consequences are messy from boiling to Mt Vesuvius in a heartbeat.

    #1844525
     
    BPL Member

    @rememberthelorax

    We are getting waaay off-topic from the "orange thingy" but what the heck, this is BPL after all lol.


    @Chad
    ,

    Yeah the vast majority of the pots I have seen that are Ti pots end up with that ring inside. Two of the three I have owned had them.

    It would be really awesome if somebody out there with the knowledge, skills, abilities, wahtever, to know how to test material to determine if the flux rings are Titanium or Aluminium. Either way, both have insanely high melting points (AI: 1220.58 °F and Ti is 3034 °F). To stop and think that even one part of these these pots are reaching (even if it is AI) 1220+ degrees just seems to be a bit scary to me.


    @Philip
    ,

    I never actually stopped to look at the flux-rings to see if they have colorized like Ti does. Maybe somebody with an actual working JB Sol Ti can confirm this… mine is all melted lol


    @David
    , I can confirm that mine did not boil out of water. My water and beef bullion were still inside of it after she light up like a fireball of doom ;)

    @Nigel,

    John isn't this the reason to go Alcohol, its hard to have China Syndrome?

    It is my understanding that the Jetboil has never caused a wild fire, while over the last 10 years at least 5 major forest fires have been started by PCT hikers using alcohol stoves. Now that's something to seriously ponder on.

    Granted I will likely not ever hike the PCT with a Jetboil but a whole lot of people have over the last few years.

    Also puzzling, the Jetboil's defining feature is in its name, it boils water fast, so why would you be doing anything else after you ignited?

    Yeah, I agree. I cooked something in a Jetboil (none of my existing ones, years back) one single time (top ramen) and that was more than enough to convince me to never do it again.

    I throw a half bullion cube in mine sometimes just to help out the meal I am having. But nothing about a bullion cube would result in a China Syndrome – which typically only happens (up until this recent string of problems the Sol Ti has been documented to have) when people try cooking their entire freaking freeze-dried or dehydrated meal inside of one.

    You have hardly any time to anyway and the consequences are messy from boiling to Mt Vesuvius in a heartbeat.

    Yeah, exactly. I used my jetboil once for a cup of tea, probably around 14 oz of water, and it was freaking boiling before I got the tea from the bag it was in, into my drinking cup. It could not have taken more than about 40 seconds. And giving how hot it cooks, it just seems like people trying to cook an entire meal in their Jetboil would just result with the entire bottom of the pot filled with nothing but burnt food.

    #1844527
    Phillip Colelli
    Spectator

    @pdcolelli42

    Locale: AT, follow@ www.thruperspective.com

    I wanted to add one final thing here before I retire for the night. On my old jetboil I cooked out of it plenty of times. I just turned the flame down as far as possible to where you almost couldn't even see a flame and stirred a bit. Once I figured out the right level of flame (absolute minimum) it never would burn the contents. I've cooked all sorts of thick saucy meals in it without burning them. Still though it required very close attention. Just don't go telling jetboil I did that…

    #1844535
    Nigel Healy
    Member

    @nigelhealy

    Locale: San Francisco bay area

    I know so far I can boil water fast, and I know so far I can't cook oatmeal the way I know from the Trangia method. That's about all I know so far.

    http://s334.photobucket.com/albums/m421/NigelHealy/Jetboil%20Sol%20Ti%20-%20making%20porridge/?action=view&current=MVI_0634.mp4

    Whilst it doesn't render the Jetboil useless, it does drastically restrict both the type of meals and their method of cooking to basically everything begins by boiling water and then either that water is poured into another item like a Ziploc bag containing food, or food is poured into the Jetboil pot post flame extinguished. Add pot cosey, wait.

    #1844546
     
    BPL Member

    @rememberthelorax

    lolol. just watched your video… I am laughing with pain in my side from laughing so hard because I have done that myself Nigel. Man did I learn quickly to never do that again. lolol

    (plus, technically speaking, it voids the warranty, which states, "This warranty does not cover any damage or malfunction arising from misuse"… and they use the "misuse" as anything other than, well, boiling water)

    #1844550
    chris smead
    BPL Member

    @hamsterfish

    Locale: San Jose, CA

    So am I understanding this right? The stove fails first, causes a mini Hiroshima, then the cup instantly melts and the flux ring falls off?

    I just got this thing, and was all excited. Now I'm afraid to trust it on a 10 day trip I'm planning and that makes me sad :(.

    Has anyone used this thing extensively on long trips? If so do you still have eyebrows?

    I think I'm going to start another thread here asking for suggestions on a stove/pot combo with similiar fuel efficiency so feel free to comment on that.

    #1844551
    Ken Thompson
    BPL Member

    @here

    Locale: Right there

    ^^best stove name ever^^

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