Anyone repair their BRS 3000 ?

[Brian H]

I know many have been fortunate to have their lightweight BRS 3000 last an entire through hike.  I’ve bought a few from multiple different vendors on amazon over the years for both personal use and friends.  I’ve never experienced a failure that made the stove inoperable after what I consider high use.

I do carry a spare gasket between the fuel canister and the stove body just in case.  On a couple occasions over the years I’ve sometimes had one of the support arms start to bend down, from what I suspect is from the high quality Chineseium (pun intended) used as the material.  My simple fix has been just to bend the arm affected back into position and it would look and function as if nothing bent.

I love the low weight and I’m ok with the tradeoff of a rarely bent support arm as the stove would still work fine.  I’m just curious if anyone has ever: 1) Had this stove fail outright to where it won’t work, and 2) Anyone else just bend the arm back into position if it did bend down?

Cheers!

[Tim H]

Mine failed at mile 767 on the PCT this year, so to speak. I picked up an off-brand iso-butane cartridge in Lone Pine, and when I fired it up it began sputtering. I didn’t think much of it, since I experienced this a bit with some cartridges sometimes. I put my 550ml pot with water on and waited for it to boil, and suddenly my pot fell over. One of the BRS-3000 support arms had melted. I suppose I can contribute that to an improper fuel mix from the canister burned much hotter than the titanium alloy could withstand. I did use this stove for hundreds of boils over many years, so maybe it was due to metal fatigue. Regardless, I got my $17 worth.

The only bummer was that I had to hold the pot over the stove until I picked up another one in Bishop.

[Mike]

I used one fir a long time, but bought a Pocket Rocket Deluxe a few months ago and will never go back. The piezo igniter and regulator is great for the Sierras. I hate to say it but I think I’m over ultralight.

[DWR D]

After pot supports bent from heat… and pot falling off, I switched to the Fire-Maple 300T at 1.6 oz, still pretty light and compact.

 

[Brad W]

I used mine for about 2 years. Just to boil between 12-24oz of water. Never had an issue. I switched to Soto Amicus because I hike when there is more than 4mph winds and the BRS just stinks if your blink to hard. I still use the BRS on peak bagging trips or when every oz counts.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Had 4.  Inspected and cleaned all stoves before usage: 3/4 had internal debris that had to be cleaned out.  1/4 had an cracked O-ring upon arrival: flames shooting out between th stove body & canister: the O-ring was replaced.  On full blast, the flame can lift off the burner head and the flame goes out; throttle back to prevent that from happening.  The stove body will get hot to the touch if you simmer for a long time, however; the canister remained touchable.  My 2 cents.

[Brian H]

Some great replies going on.  I want to add that I am really happy with the BRS stove and have been using it for close to 4 years.  While one of the arms bent slightly, it was on a short trip so it didn’t impact the fun at all.  As I previously mentioned, when I got home I simply bent it back into position and have used it for many hundred of miles since.

One variable compared  is that I am only cooking for one and use a small pot, generally boiling H20 only.  If I had a larger pot or was cooking for another person too I would probably break out the pocket rocket.

Needless to say, I’ve never had a failure with it that impacted the stoves ability to produce heat. Also, I do carry a spare 0 ring gasket (just like I do with the sawyer filter).  I was just seeing if anyone else fixed an arm by bending it back rather than taking it out of service.  Regarding the wind issue, yep, it needs to be in a protected place for max efficiency.  It’s not a problem with me as I bring a 1/8 foam sit pad that I curl around the stove when in use.  It blocks the wind really good.  Heck, my recent section hike was 8 days on an 8 oz fuel can, and that was with the stove being used every breakfast and dinner, with coffee too. Blocking the wind is just so important!

Cheers,  Brian

[DWR D]

Bending metal, whether with heat or not, will only serve to weaken the metal further. The stove is so cheap, if you like it so much and don’t mind the pot supports bending, you could buy an new one for every trip… Can the bending be fixed? I bet it can if you get a metal shop to cut new pot supports out of better metal and then replace the originals… but that would be some big bucks.

[Roger Caffin]

First of all, understand that Amazon has no less that TWELVE different stoves marketed as ‘BRS-3000T’. Only ONE of them is genuine. All the others are fakes, and who knows what the quality of a fake is?

Next, the laws of physics have the upper limit to flame temperature for a propane or butane/propane mix well below the melting point of titanium. You can NOT melt titanium arms on any stove with canister fuel – but you can melt cheaper metals.

You can also bend cheaper metals, sometimes quite easily. Titanium on the other hand tends to be rather hard. If it was possible to bend the arm back into position, I really doubt it was made of titanium!

I have been using genuine BRS-3000T stoves for a long time, and never had any problems at all. From what I can tell of the BRS company (NO connection), it produces good gear But I can well imagine some of the fakes and look-alikes giving all sorts of problems. Caveat emptor.

<soapbox>
Trying to run almost any canister stove without a good windshield is a mug’s game. Sorry if that offends, BUT!
</soapbox>

Cheers

[Alex H]

What Roger says is right on.  I have been using one since at least 2015, cooking for two, without any issues, including up to 2 ltr. pots and you have to have a windscreen with any of the canister stoves for the most efficient performance.  If I am cooking for more than two I use a different stove.

[Brad W]

Not sure if this is a common issue but I just had mine spew gas out of the threaded side while installing it on a canister and burn my hand through my glove. Temps were 30F. Even with the stove fully seated and tight it continued to leak from the threads for  10 seconds slowly stopping. This is a stove with little use and performed fine in the summer. O-rings looks fine FWIW.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Brad

Funny you should mention that! Last week-end I connected a small FireMaple burner to a new canister and lit it without checking for leaks/smell. Fireball! Serious fireball. Stove must be 5 – 10 years old.

After a little ‘panic’, I picked the canister up by the base, which was not hot, slipped my BBJ knife into the handle (typical loop), and UNscrewed the stove. As soon as I had undone just one turn, the leak stopped and the flames disappeared. No coffee that day.

At home I confirmed that the connection could leak, unless I screwed the stove on very tight. So I fished the O-ring out and measured it. BS011 – typical. It did not seem to be damaged, but it no longer sealed. Now, the BS011 has a cross-section of 1.78 mm, so I replaced it with a Viton 2.5 mm one. Great joy.

I checked 2 other similar upright stoves ( Vargo, Kovea) I had from some years ago, and they both leaked now. I am quite sure they used not to. So I replaced the O-rings in them with new Viton ones (1 x 2.5 mm, 1 x 2.0 mm), and they are now fine as well.

Sigh: fine stoves, but not so good O-rings. Aging, I think. Very poor.
Moral: ALWAYS sniff the connection before making a flame!

Cheers

[Brad W]

Thanks Roger. That’s interesting. Maybe the use of lower grade rubber or whatever material they are using now is contributing also.

[Roger Caffin]

Yes. There are many different rubbers used in O-rings, and a major differentiator is cost. As you can imagine, the cheaper the rubber, the poorer the quality.

One of the better materials is Viton. It has a wider temperature range, up to 240 C, and a longer life. I use Viton for most everything.

Cheers

[Brad W]

Ah, ok. Do you have a kit that includes these o-rings or do you buy them individually?

 

[Roger Caffin]

I buy them from ebay vendors I KNOW in packs of 25 or so. Yes, they are Chinese, but the (Viton) ones I buy meet US FDA standards. Sigh – or so I am assured.

You might be able to buy them from Amazon, but frankly I have greater confidence in the ebay vendors I use. There is a lot of crap on Amazon. You can also buy them from places like “The O-ring Store” in USA. I don’t, because their freight charges to Oz are ridiculous: FedEx Express or similar. US$50 for US$5 worth of O-rings!
Cheers

[Jerry Adams]

I had a stove that started leaking when it got really cold

It was fine during the day, but if I left it screwed onto the canister, over night, it would get cold, some pieces of metal in the stove shrank a bit, all the butane leaked out, no coffee the next morning.

I’ve had a number of stoves since then that I just leave screwed onto the canister over night as it gets cold, but no leak.

[Jerry Adams]

Pretty brave of you Roger, to unscrew it when it was in fireball mode.

I would have then screwed it back on, more tightly, and had my coffee.  Very carefully : )

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Jerry

Pretty brave ? ?
Not at all. I knew I had screwed the stove on ‘reasonably’ tight, so the chance of making it tighter, in the midst of a firefight, was not good.

But unscrewing it would be much easier, and I ‘knew’ that the canister would seal as soon as the stove went one turn. It was not the valve that was leaking, but the O-ring. Well, that was my ‘considered opinion’ at the time. For sure, if I undid the stove from the canister further, it would sooner or later fall off, and the Lindal valve would definitely shut.

Could I have then reconnected the stove onto the canister? Yes, and that might have worked. But could I be sure that the O-ring was not (somehow) damaged? Anyhow, it was a hot day and Sue was not enthused about such experiments in the middle of the very inflammable Oz bush. As it was, we had to stamp a ring of burning leaves out! (We tend to be a bit paranoid about fires.)

Bottom line: no damage was done.

Cheers

[Roger Caffin]

over night, it would get cold, some pieces of metal in the stove shrank a bit, all the butane leaked out, no coffee the next morning.
Hum. May I suggest that it was the O-ring which shrank rather than metal? The coeff of expansion for rubber is much higher than for metal. And rubber gets hard in the cold too.

Cheers

[Jerry Adams]

Good point

Something shrank because of cold

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