Here is a Tilley-compatible burner I bought from Tilley Lamps and Stoves not long ago and just recently took into use with a fully restored and tested Guardsman. It started acting up lately so I tried using the hood and burner assembly on other working Tilleys with the result that wherever I used this burner, the performance of the lamp took a dive. Today I decided to trash the freshly installed Tilley mantle and clean up the burner to see what’s going on. If my eyes aren’t deceiving me, it looks like the air tubes have begun to sag and the walls of the burner body have crumpled at the air tube inlets. The threaded portion of each air tube is also distorted. I’m currently running the Guardsman that previously hosted this burner with a newer X246B burner and it’s working just fine. If I were a betting man I would say that I’ll bet it will continue to work fine with the Tilley burner for the long run, barring any unforeseen other problems with the lamp. Did I simply get a dud burner, of is there something specific I should be looking for as far as issues with the lamp that might have caused this to happen?
That burner does not look good. The best test to do now would be to find your best-performing Tilley, put that burner on it, and see if it underperforms. Cheers Tony
Thanks, Tony. I’ve tested this burner on all my Tilleys and it makes every one of them perform terribly. I usually end up aborting the test after a couple minutes when it’s obvious the flames are never going to stay inside the mantle. I’ve also tried using the hood and burner of my best-performing Tilley on the lamp the Juliands burner came from and that combination works beautifully.
It wasn't made like that. It has over heated and deformed under the weight of the hood. Possibly it was burning up in the dome at some point? Also see this thread. Tilley X246
I had indeed read your post(s) in that thread yesterday. Out of curiosity, was that also a Juliands burner? It sure looks like one with that hyper-elongated dome. Maybe that’s the problem? People talk these up because they weigh significantly more than Tilley burners, but perhaps more burner = more heat = more failures like this. Jeff, I hear you about the scrap parts, but by the look of things all I could reliably salvage would be three nuts and a spigot. Pretty expensive for little bits and bobs. I’m guessing I paid around 40€ for this with shipping and customs fees.
The burner dome looks okay and the mixing tube which is located inside the dome may be okay and I would remove the air pipes and check them.
I wouldn’t use the air pipes anymore even if I could remove them, which I can’t. The threaded section of the outer end of each tube is canted upwards. I agree the dome looks OK, but I don’t feel like I could trust it since that’s probably where the problem occurred. Also, I can’t remove it by hand, nor the spigot. I won’t put a wrench to either of these parts or clamp any part of the burner in a vice. I lost an otherwise good burner that way not long ago, even when not using much force and taking care to wrap the surfaces in protective material. Has anyone had luck using a nylon strap wrench for things like this?
I have now managed, somehow, to disassemble everything that can be disassembled by hand, with the help of a giant rubber band folded and wrapped/stretched around the various appendages after soaking in scalding hot water. Check out how distorted the body of the burner is! I wasn’t able to remove any of the air tubes as I think they’ve become misshapen as have the mating holes in the wall of the burner. In the second picture, zoom in and observe how there’s a chunk of metal missing from the end of the threaded tube. There also appears to be a stress crack extending from that further down the tube. To me, that looks like shoddy quality and workmanship. Remember, this burner has not been used more than a few hours total (not possibly more than 15-20) and I’ve disassembled it exactly once, by hand.
Hi @Jaska I would just contact Juliands, send all your pictures and tell him what has happened? Take it from there, Regards pb
@podbros I’ll get in touch with him about it. He certainly seemed nice on the phone when I called him to order the burner and other doo-dads, so hopefully we can work something out with this.
@Jaska Hi sorry to see your problem with your burner. I purchased one sometime ago. The burner has been ok on my lamp although it is not lit very often. I am sure Juliands will resolve the problem for you. Hope all goes well.
That is the first time that I have seen a new burner become so distorted and I concur that you should contact the seller.
Yes I put one of those on a guardsman some two years ago - it still looks fine.. something odd went on with yours - that's for sure.. Definitley contact him. There is nothing usable in your pictures.
Alright, I do feel a lot better knowing that so many of you have had nothing but good experiences with the Juliands burners. My inquisitive mind just can’t stop wondering how in the world this happened to a new burner. I’m cleaning up some other burners now and trying to decide which one I’ll use in the currently burnerless Guardsman. Is there even one person here who would say that a new-style Tilley burner (with the locking pin) is as good as an older one? The other old-style Tilley burner I have appears to have air tubes that slightly sag downwards. Is this just something that burners eventually do? My new-style burners all appear to be structurally perfect and I’ve never personally noticed that they perform any worse than the old-style ones.
It looks to me like it has been operating in “underburn” mode and the brass has got too hot and slumped. I would use that burner you have just pictured. Cheers Tony
I had read about the “underburn” thing in another thread and, while I think I understand it, I just don’t know how that could have happened with my lamp. I’ve always operated it at the recommended 100 total pumps and monitored the level of the pressure indicator. Yes, I do realize it’s not a precision pressure gauge, but it at least functions reliably in that it indicates maximum pressure at 100 strokes of the pump. Thanks, Tony, for the opinion on the Tilley burner. I’ve just fitted it back to the hood and installed a new mantle. I don’t know how automotive copper grease hoods up at such high heat, but I added a smear to the threads of the air tubes because they were a nightmare to slacken. I hope to have feeling in my thumbs again within the next month or so .
@Jaska yes, I'd use that burner. The following images are of the burner from my Tilley TL136 after aproximately 100 hours burn time. I bought it from an eBay seller - NOT Juliands but it is very similar to those sold by him. This burner DID NOT have underburn ! The deformed burner body. An example of how the air tube threads have bent at the burner end.
Thanks for that, @Henry Plews. Do you think it could be the quality/grade/hardness of the brass? Tony
@Henry Plews Thank you for posting those detailed photos. That looks exactly like what’s happened to my burner. I’m now burning in a new mantle, which I also happen to have bought from Juliands, on my trustiest Tilley with the freshly cleaned and reinstalled Tilley burner I pictured earlier. Good stuff, I say! These mantles have been kind of hit or miss with my lamps, but this one seems to like them.
Only recently I discovered that Tilley used different grades of brass depending on what that part was designed to do. I'm not sure these grades of brass are still available... does anyone know if they are? Does anyone know if they are even produced any longer? I've seen old burners that use steel air tubes so maybe these were used for their inherent strength when repeatedly heated. There are several different methods of annealing (softening) brass, but one way is to heat it to between 900c - 1300c (depending on the composition) and let it cool naturally. This would be exactly what happens during a burners use so if the wrong grade was used, it would quickly become too soft to provide any support. My guess is, that by accident or design, the wrong formulation of brass was used for the air tubes. This doesn't help you @Jaska but it might explain why the burner failed.
By what I've seen on UK Ebay, an Tilley X246 is pretty cheap, so why not buy the cheap Tilley X246 lamp for parts. I know it's a gamble, I would say that team Buggerlugs has only lost about 6 burners in total and maybe brought 150 or so X246 lamps It's even better if you can find them around the secondhand shops and you can have a good look at the burner and decided. This is what we do. Most times you get a good globe, vaporiser and in Australia bug catchers etc.
