Hi all, I'm a newbie to all this pressure lamp thing. It started with a Tilley 246x for camping and now I've bought an old disused bialadding 300x. The problem is I've just pressed it up for the first time and found a couple of stress fractures in the tank base. Apparently this is a common fault? The question I've got is is it likely that if I buy a por-15 sealing kit, is it likely to work or am I just going to waste my time and should just try and get hold of another tank? If I'm gonna need a new tank, does anyone happen to know where I can get one without resorting to eBay and risking another dud please? Cheers for your help.
A 2nd-hand replacement tank for a 300X would probably cost less than the POR15 kit. Depending on where the cracks are you might be able to solder them up from the outside.
Welcome aboard! Another option is to keep that lantern for spares and obtain another complete lantern and perhaps a member here may have one to spare.
Well this really is a bit of an odd one for me... I had several tanks with this issue, assuming the leak you are talking about is right on the rim. I treated several of these tanks but only one out of four was initially sucsessful. Although the leaks on all of them were reduced it didn't completely fix them or so I thought! I put the three failures to one side on the basis that they could always be used for shelf queens. However I have since tried all of them again months later including one that after treatment still leaked even without pressure in the tank. Now all of them appear to be leak free and I have no explanation for what has happened here. One of the lamps has seen many hours use without any further signs of leaking...
These tanks do appear to be a real problem though Jeff... I may have just been unlucky but I've had more leaky than I have had non leaky.
Hope i'm not straying too far from the jist of this thread, but is it just the early 300, 300X Bialaddin tanks that suffer from stress cracks, or all of them (310, 315, 320 etc)? I suppose it could be that some of the early ones are steel or have steel bottoms... Just curious, given that the Bialaddin / Vapalux lamps do seem to be generally well made...
Don't know if it will help but had a similar problem with the base of a Pork Pie, a friend who was into motor bikes sealed it with tank sealer. That was four years ago and it's been used and sitting on my dining table without problems since. I think that the sealer is quite expensive so if you know a garage, mechanic of bike enthusiast they might be able to help. You will have to unblock the feed tube once it's done but that's quite easy as I used some wire (multi strand) to drill through it. Also had to make sure the thread for the pump was also clear but the sealer was easy to remove.
