The outcome of THIS fettling project. As found, with much to do, including rectifying a collapsed hood … … and scratch-building a priming cup. Seals replaced, non-return valve serviced, graphite packing in the pricker control replenished … … and revealing a distributor nameplate underneath the grime. John
@Tony Press Cheers, Tony. On first firing it up there was an ignited fuel vapour leak at the joint between the top and bottom half of the generator. I’d already cleaned the mating surfaces and the screw threads on lower part and the securing nut on the upper half, so it was a surprise. A smear of copper grease allowed me to nip the joint up that bit tighter (I guess) and that resolved it. I’ll most likely assemble such joints with copper grease as a matter of course in future.
Thanks, John. Good to know. I’ve got into the habit these days of having copper grease on hand for most threads; and nickel grease for very high temperature joins. Having run your Efar, how do you rate it? Tony
@Tony Press It’s a pretty well-made lantern Tony, but with a couple of components I take issue with. One is the non-return valve, with too shallow a head and the threaded part too short, more suited to a thin HDPE washer or (as here) a well-flattened lead one. A thicker washer from scratch would find the threads scrabbling for grip before tightening of the NRV flattened it, or requiring pre-flattening of the washer before installation. The NRV head’s flats fit this NRV tool … … but not (too broad across the flats by a fraction) my best quality one. True, it exposes a quality-control issue with at least one of my NRV tools! I didn’t return that NRV to the lantern, but installed a better-quality equivalent. The the filler cap/air screw assembly doesn’t get my vote either, but I’m pretty sure it’s a replacement for an EFAR product. The one that came with the EFAR on the left, pre-WWII Petromax equivalent on the right. Looks like ‘KARISHMA’ brand, with an ‘N’ It does its job, but it’s crudely made compared to the German original and lets down the overall appearance of the lantern, so I have a Petromax pattern on order with Base Camp. Mike had a genuine EFAR cap to hand and declared it as identical to the Petromax equivalent, reasonable evidence I think that my lantern’s original filler cap was lost.
Alas no, Jeff. Though it has no pressure gauge filler cap, I didn’t need a gauge to realise that I couldn’t pressurise the lamp enough to create the volume of Petromax ‘hiss’ I would have expected. The other certain indicator of an air leak was a gradual fall-off of pressure. I didn’t suspect the filler cap seal (replaced) or the lead seal of generator to tank joint (also replaced), so it had to be somewhere else above the fuel level. A dunk of the pressurised tank in a bucket of water revealed the culprit, the patch on the top of the tank which my superficial inspection suggested was ok - wrong! I cleaned up and re-soldered the patch and was rewarded with no tell-tale stream of air bubbles when I repeated the dunk test. Better still, having pressurised the tank to the point where pump strokes were getting difficult (!) the expected soundtrack and level of illumination were restored, the lamp maintaining pressure all evening.
