BRS-3000T – Another One Bites the Dust

[Hikin’ Jim]

So, I’ve got a total of 4 reports of pot support failure.  OK, yeah, that’s not that many, but…

Here’s one of said reports:   https://adventuresinstoving.blogspot.com/2017/03/brs-3000t-failure-2.html

Weird thing of it is that I’ve got some guys saying that they’re doing 20 minute burns snow melting with no problems and I’ve got other guys putting one cup of water on and the pot supports go all wavy gravy on them.

OK, so it’s definitely creep deformation (pot supports lose internal structural strength due to heat build up past the “service rating”), but why in some cases but not others?  On mine, the wind focused the flame on a pot support, and that support failed.  But in the report above, no wind.

Part of me is now wondering if this is not only a design issue (the pot supports get blasted with heat).

Perhaps it’s also a quality control issue.  I mean this isn’t a precision engineering work of art here, right? They aren’t going to go all out on QC, now are they?

HJ

[James holden]

Well are you sure it was caused by heat and not a bit of rough handling, etc ….

just bend it back ….

does one expect a 10 yankee dollah  25g stove to be as durable as a 40-70 smackaroo stove 2-3 times the weight?

;)

[jimmy b]

I’m confused :(     After doing a little reading on hardening Ti some suggested the opposite of most tool steel hardening. Quenching seemed to anneal it and heating to red in color and air cooling at ambient temps seemed to harden it. If that’s the case wouldn’t using it keep it hard if not brittle. Sounds like it may be a poor choice of material in the mix. (wrong alloy for app.)

[J-L]

I used one of these stoves for about 18 months, maybe 45 nights total of boiling water and making coffee, never more than 2 cups of water and with stove on low-med power. All the pot supports are warped and it only screws on to about half of my fuel canisters now. It will thread on to all canisters, but often not enough to depress the lindal valve. Not sure what changed

Odd stove, probably better to spend the money on a nicer one that will perform better and last longer

[Jerry Adams]

and back a few pages or on a previous thread, some people reported getting it but there were defects, like it was plugged up or something

[Hikin’ Jim]

Well are you sure it was caused by heat and not a bit of rough handling, etc ….

just bend it back ….

does one expect a 10 yankee dollah  25g stove to be as durable as a 40-70 smackaroo stove 2-3 times the weight?

@bearbreeder,

Yankee dollars?!  No sir!  I paid perfectly good rinminbi for it.  ;)

In the cases of the reports I’ve received, they’re all heat caused creep deformation.  There could be a quality control issue though.  Some people are having no problem with extended burns.  Some people are experiencing pot support failures.  Bit of a crap shoot I suppose.

HJ

[Hikin’ Jim]

@jimmyb

I’m confused :(     After doing a little reading on hardening Ti some suggested the opposite of most tool steel hardening. Quenching seemed to anneal it and heating to red in color and air cooling at ambient temps seemed to harden it. If that’s the case wouldn’t using it keep it hard if not brittle. Sounds like it may be a poor choice of material in the mix. (wrong alloy for app.)

Well, who knows exactly what alloy they used.  In this case however, the Ti wasn’t heated to red and then allowed to cool.  It was heated to red and then put under the stress of having a pot on it.  Yeah, only one to three cups of water, depending on which report you’re talking about, so not a huge load, but enough.  The cooling occurred after the deformation.  However, I was able to bend the supports back with my fingers with no difficulty whatsoever, so I don’t see any evidence of hardening or brittleness.  One of the other guys who had his supports bend said the same thing, that he just bent his supports back with his fingers.

HJ

[Hikin’ Jim]

@johnnyh88

I used one of these stoves for about 18 months, maybe 45 nights total of boiling water and making coffee, never more than 2 cups of water and with stove on low-med power. All the pot supports are warped and it only screws on to about half of my fuel canisters now. It will thread on to all canisters, but often not enough to depress the lindal valve. Not sure what changed

Dang.  Sounds like you did everything right.

Odd stove, probably better to spend the money on a nicer one that will perform better and last longer

Well unless your name is @bearbreeder  lol
Yeah, it’s kind of a crap shoot as to what you’re going to get with this stove.  I won’t be taking mine out on any trip where it would matter.  I’ll suck up the horrific weight of the next level up in stove weight, an entire 20 or so grams.  Somehow I’ll manage.

HJ

[James holden]

note that the failure of aluminum threaded stoves (in response to john) can happen to MSR as well as christine found out years ago … she went through 2 of em

As I have written before I had problems with a MSR pocket rocket but thought that it might be either an user fault or just bad luck so I bought another pocket rocket for my CDT thruhike this year.

Unfortunately, after 3 months on the trail (= about 200 uses of the stove) the same problem appeared and rendered the stove more or less useless. And at that point I was in the middle of nowhere with absolutely miserable weather and a non-functioning stove. I had a real problem!

With the same problem happening twice on two different MSR pocket rocket stoves I do not believe any more that it was a handling problem or just bad luck. I think that MSR is just delivering bad quality. I was never that disappointed with a piece of equipment before.

I therefore recommend getting a different stove if you are planning on using it a lot and depend on it. Hope this warning helps.

Christine

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/7910/

;)

[Hikin’ Jim]

We’re going to start calling Eric, “Eric the apologist.”  Everytime a BRS-3000T fails, Eric has a well thought out justification in mind.  “User error”  “It could happen to any stove”  “it’s *your* fault”   ;)  Man loves his stove.  I guess I can understand that.  :)

@johnnyh88 , I don’t suppose you’ve got any photos do you?

HJ

[James holden]

oh dear jim … i never got personal with you ;)

i actually use my jetboil much more … because i know what the 3000T is … an UL 25g 10 yankee dollah stove that even by looking at it you know it aint “bomber”

how many have BRS sold … thousands? … no doubt there will be some failures

have you updated yr fire maple hornet review yet? … that one is only 20g heavier it seems

 

 

;)

[James Marco]

I tend to think that they are not using the correct alloy for the pot holders. These SHOULD be good ti alloy to withstand the temps involved.

Note that many ti sheets will have “soft” spots, especially if production is rushed. Normally scraps are reprocessed with additional aluminum to make up for that lost during smelting (aluminum will burn off.) If extra aluminum is added and/or the pour is made before complete mixing, spots of aluminum can occur and simply be pressed into the sheet metal. One set of supports on the BRS can be a very high aluminum content (and not very heat resistant.) The next set over can be a good set. A typical QC problem typical with Chinese products. Even their cast iron displays this with soft and hard spots (brake rotors for instance.)

Anyway, there seem to be 2 separate FMS-300T stoves out there. The older version will have two brass nuts on them. The newer ones will have a single aluminum nut under the pot holder assembly. Anyway, if you have one of the older models, with two brass nuts, you can lighten it about a quarter/third ounce.
1) Loosen the bottom nut and note the base location on the tube body.
2) Remove the jet and carefully drill out and remove the sintered brass filter. Replace the jet.
3) Remove the bottom nut, add some Locktite/Superglue, and screw it down to the marked location.
You just saved 6-7 grams of weight with no loss of function. The new stoves already do this.
You can also remove the upper nut, cut it in half with a hack saw and put it back to save another 3-4gm.
GramWienies Unite!

[J-L]

Here are the pot supports. The bend is subtle from this view:

But it results in my pot sitting at quite a tilted angle:

The pot makes only minimal contact with the supports:

The pot used to sit level on the stove. Then one day I noticed it was tilted and the supports looked bent. I guess they’ve been gradually warping/drooping with every use.

This is also one of the canisters that does not work with the stove. I have another MSR canister (same size) that does work with the stove. When I screw on the threads, I stop when it’s snug and I feel resistance. The stove threads and fuel canister threads do not appear damaged to me. This same fuel canister works fine with my MSR Windburner. I got the Windburner after my BRS-3000T had issues. So much heavier, but so nice to use! :) Makes me want to try a lighter Jetboil. I’ll stick with my super-reliable Esbit stove when weight matters.

[Cameron M]

Great gear esoteria added here! It does make me think that I will not use this stove for snow.

@hikin_jim  Just don’t get Eric started on battery explosions and you will come out relatively unscathed :)

[Curt Peterson]

I had this same thing happen a year ago or so. I bent it back, but it’s not quite the same and definitely makes me not trust it. Happily went back to my 116 stove. A tad heavier, but has been just bomber for me. Great design. Super stable. No issues ever. I keep trying other canister burners, but keep coming back to this one.

[jimmy b]

James Marco,

Thanks for your post. That would be a good explanation of my suspicions of something wrong with the alloy. QC is king and it very well could explain the hit and miss qualities of the legs. The fact that the legs end up dead soft (able to be bent back into shape) is very telling. Unfortunately for our wallets/purses consistency in MFG tends to cost more money. Nothing new there.

Hikin’ jim

Thanks for the review. It has definitely drawn out a percentage of failures with this stove. I was going to try one of these shortly but for as many times I use a canister stove I think I will stick with what I’ve got.

[Nick Gatel]

When these back-door stoves first came out, I said I wouldn’t risk my life for a $10 stove. I would be concerned about my safety if I owned one.

My last canister topper was purchased over 10 years ago — a GS100.

Dollar cost average per year is now around $3 per year, which is much less than $10 for a stove that fails in under a year. It fits a MSR Titan Kettle perfectly. No issues with boiling water in a 1.5 liter pot either. No aluminum threads to strip. Should it ever need maintenance, I don’t have to hack the stove, I can use this maintenance kit, which has been sitting in my gear closet for over 10 years…

Okay, the GS100 is efficient, low polluting, stable, and durable. It will probably last another 10 or 20 years, if not more — assuming canisters will still be available… all my previous canister stoves became obsolete when the canisters disappeared from the market place.

It does weigh a couple ounces more than some other stoves… but I can save 2 ounces in many, many less important areas. Heck, my go-to hiking shoes weigh more than a pound less than most trail runners, which equates to more than a 5 lb equivalent gear reduction. Plus at 5’11” and 150 lbs, I carry a lot less body weight than most people… that is the place to start reducing weight, not your 3 ounce stove!

Let me conclude… cheap, light, and not durable… may fail when you really need it… might be a stupid light purchase, IMO.

 

[James holden]

john …

certain stoves may or may not work with certain canisters … in theory they should … buuuut ……

for example the snow peak litemax had issues a few years ago with BPL members not working on the MSR canisters back then ….

I don’t know about the Gigapower, but the SP LiteMax stove is definitely NOT compatible with MSR canisters. (Ask me how I know this.) LiteMax stove works fine with SnowPeak’s own canisters.

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/23128/

and jetboil …

Please be aware that the new Jetboil stoves do NOT fit all gas cylinders, and they are only guaranteed to work on Jetboil gas canisters.
This can be a real, perhaps even fatal problem if you have carried you spare cylinder into the wilderness and it does not work when you screw it in.

The story:
I brought a new Jetboil stove when the old (faithful) Jetboil could not be repaired. The diffuser mesh and fibre got brittle and broke and they could no longer supply spares. So, first trip out all OK second trip all Ok, then came time to change gas, and nothing. Tighten the gas bottle, nothing, a full gas canister and no flow. Not too bad this time as it was a lunch time stop on a day hike, and I just got laughed at. Went home tried another cylinder and it worked. So, I tried my whole array of new and half used canisters. Some work some do not. I do not have any Jet boil gas, so I can’t say if they would do the same. It then let us down in the berg, with yet another new canister unable to push its gas through. Lucky we were just ay Giants hut fitting the new windows so it was not a crisis, but it could have been.

It was still in the warranty period and the store, Drifters, sent it back to Cape Town. It comes back with a clean bill of health, but still does not work on exactly the same cylinders that it did not work on before. So, they pull out their trump card. “It was tested on Jetboil canisters and worked and we (Jetboil) cannot guarantee that it works on other makes of cylinder. Sorry for you.
(This was backed up in a reply from Jetboil international.

https://www.vertical-endeavour.com/forum/44-gear/55406-jetboil-users-beware.html?limitstart=0

is it user error, thread stripping, the particular canister, etc? … who knows …..

theres plenty more stories like this for all brands of stoves and canisters … which is why stove manufacturers usually add the disclaimer about only using their brand of fuel (obviously you can with BRS)

;)

[James holden]

now before everyone goes off in a panic lets take a look what many folks consider a good quality UL stove … the snow peak litemax

here we have a BPLer having a port support fall off …

I had a Litemax, one of the rivets for the fold-out pot support extensions was the 1st point of failure in my case.

Dave

and another with a strip of the aluminum threads …

I enjoyed my Litemax while it worked but I can attest to a failure on the threads. Maybe I accidentally overtightened at some point. I switched to the Micro Light and have no complaints.

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/89800/page/2/

and heres another thread strip of the threads (determined by snow peak after she sent it in) which led to some fireworks ..

I have had a Snow Peak LiteMax stove for several years and used it on numerous trips. Great little canister stove, weighs just 2 ounces, and has never given me any trouble until this last trip.

On this trip I noticed that every time I threaded the stove onto the canister a bit of gas escaped. I think that has happened before, but this time it was more noticeable. Other than that it seemed fine.

The last night of my trip as I threaded the stove onto the canister even more gas seemed to escape and yet, foolishly, I lit the stove. Big mistake. The gas was not only coming out in controlled amounts where it was supposed to, it was also escaping in large amounts around the base of the stove. The stove was in flames and would remain so until all the gas from the canister was consumed. I watched in horror. Tried to put it out by dousing it in water, but the water did nothing. I had placed the stove on a sandy surface with nothing flammable close by. But I was worried that the canister would explode, and spread the fire. Luckily it did not.

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/96209/

and heres a few issues with port supports on the litemax bending from their REI reviews … at least 2 are claimed to be under lightish loads

Didn’t even make it thru 10 mins

The “titanium” arms on this baby buckled after one use. Was boiling a small pan of water on it – not super heavy. Medium flame. When I took the pan off, I saw that the arms were distorted and bucking inwards. Super disappointing.

Too fragile and unstable

We just used this stove on a ski trip up Rock Creek to climb Bear Creek Spire(May 20-23). The first night at 10,700 ft., on flat snow(stability is a big issue), and in no wind, it performed well. The second night at 12,500 ft., at 25 degrees F and in wind, it did not want to melt snow(even using MSR’s heat exchanger) so we had to use it in the tent. On a somewhat rough snow floor, you felt you had to hold on to the pot to not dump it. Stability is a big problem and we were using MSR’s cannister stand.

We also found the stove’s pot support arms to be fragile and when hot would bend under the weight of a pot of water.

warped pot support arm

We like the size, weight and overall performance of the stove, which we have used for 7 days (breakfast and dinner), never more than about 20 minutes/meal nor at the highest flame adjustment. The maximum weight in a pot was just over a liter of water. Near the end of the trip, we noticed that one of the pot support arms has warped slightly (though it still holds the pot). Hoping this is a production (not design) flaw, we have returned the stove in exchange for another one. We have used an angled piece of aluminum as a wind screen, but it does not surround the stove (shields about half the area around the stove) and does not sit close to the canister. Perhaps we need to be more careful in setting up the screen, but backcountry winds in Colorado and Wyoming require some wind protection.

https://www.rei.com/product/768603/snow-peak-litemax-stove

note that these issues are with a stove thats over twice the weight, around 6 times the price and produced by one of the best stove manufacturers

are we to then conclude that the litemax is a crap stove? … NO

plenty of folks im sure use their litemax just fine … as with any stove there may be issues and dud …

and the lighter the stove the less durable it tends to be … there are tradoffs such as aluminum threads or port supports that are exactly “bomber”

most folks on BPL understand this for other gear such as 0.5 cuben shelters, 70D packs, 5 oz rain jackets ….

the same holds true for stoves

;)

[Diane Pinkers]

It’s stuff like this, plus the issue of pots sliding off the pot supports, that keeps me using a Starlyte alcohol stove plus Trail Designs Caldera Cone.  I don’t mind waiting a few minutes longer to get dinner ready,  with no moving parts to mess up. Haven’t had to abandon the alcohol stove due to fire regs yet.

With concerns like these, do cannister stove users conduct a burn test before a hike, to see whether any issues have popped up,  or at least when you start a new cannister?

[Ross L]

About four years ago I had a Primus Micron  that would not work with one of my Primus cannisters (defective cannister). Since then I always do a home  test burn before heading out with a new cannister. BTW I have the BRS and a Jetboil Ti, and they have been flawless to date for me. However I take reasonable precautions and follow instructions as in only boiling water in the JB, and only boiling 2 cups on the BRS, both always used inside my shelters to avoid efficiency loss due to wind deflection. Last fall in Northern BC I got 10 days usage out of a single 110 gm cannister with the JB.

[Hikin’ Jim]

how many have BRS sold … thousands? … no doubt there will be some failures

Yes, I agree.  Every product, no matter how high quality, will have some failures.  Even NASA has the occasional failure, and I’m thinking they probably do more QC than most.

I have no desire to run down the BRS-3000T unnecessarily.  Clearly there are people doing long duration burns with relatively sizeable amounts of water (liter plus) and having no problems.  But there are persons doing shorter burns with lesser amounts that are experiencing failures.

My surmise is that it’s not just a design flaw (clearly the design does play a part here) but that also it’s a QC problem.  James’ remarks re that subject add further credence to the idea.

At this point, my interest is in discussion and the collection of what data I may.  I now have five reports of the phenomenon.

have you updated yr fire maple hornet review yet?

It’s not a review, but yes I should update that at some point.  So many stoves, so little time.

HJ

[Hikin’ Jim]

@johnnyh88

The pot used to sit level on the stove. Then one day I noticed it was tilted and the supports looked bent. I guess they’ve been gradually warping/drooping with every use.

You’re describing a text book example of creep deformation.  It’s a sort of slow, cumulative failure.   This isn’t rough handling, turning up the stove too high, or overloading the stove.  It’s about heat, materials, and design.

I don’t suppose I could post your photos on my blog as part of my on-going “investigation”/documentation of this issue?

HJ

[James Marco]

Ross, Yes, my quick testing of the Hornet/Caffin Stove indicates between 4gm and 5gm for 2 cups to 210F from 34F. A lot will depend on exact conditions, of course, but 10 days @ two burns per day is 5gm per burn and a little loss…usually from screwing the thing on and off, lighting, etc.

Jim, given the small sample size available of users of the BRS-3000T (BPL users, your blog readership,) I think the 5 reports are a bit more than an indicator. Is it serious? No. Again, you get what you pay for.

[J-L]

@hikin_jim : Yes, you can use my photos on your blog.

One positive outcome of my experience with the BRS-3000T is that it has instilled in me the practice of always testing my stove before a trip with the fuel canister(s) I plan on using.

[Author]

Posts