This is truly my first real lamp fettle. I recently received this lantern as part of a trade and since it was in the worst shape of the 4 I decided to get this one going. Up front I need to point out that I had painted the burner assembly because of rust before discovering the wonderful chemical called Evapo-Rust. From now on I'll just remove the rust and clean it up. Part one of this project was to fix a clogged generator and then replace the cracked generator nut. Upon disassembly of the generator I discovered some previous attempt at fixing it, maybe. There was 2 inches of stranded copper wire wrapped around the coil at the top and 2 inches of cotton wick wrapped around the bottom. The coil was also 2 pieces wrapped around each other. Frustrated I ordered some spares from ebay because Mike from OCP is on vacation. This morning after some pondering I decided to try a 502 generator coil, which fit, then I lightly wrapped one strand of #24 cotton mop around the coil with the cleaning rod in place, and then reinserted them back into the generator tube after using a bore brush to clean out the interior. 502 coil on top. Lantern partially reassembled, checked for leaks, and fired up. This lantern is new to me and I have no previous experience lighting it. For some reason it required a lot more pumps than I thought it should to get the fuel to flow, but it eventually did. When the replacement generator shows up I might try it out and see if the lantern behaves differently. By the way I used a Coleman 500 generator nut as a replacement. Mike
It seems that in it's current configuration I have to turn the knob to light, then momentarily to run to get the fuel flowing and then back to light. Is it the wick causing the problem? Soaking up the fuel? Thoughts any one? Mike
@HunterStovie-Lantern Guy The wick might be a factor in the lighting procedure. If you want to fiddle around, try it without the wick, or half the wick. Then again, you could just wait for the new generator. The other issue could be blockage in the fuel pickup. If you take out the wick and pump it hard, does the fuel fire out the jet in a long steady stream? Cheers Tony
It would be nice to know what was inside the original generator, not having disassembled one before. For now it's working and I have other non-function projects to attend to. So for now I'm going to leave it as it is unless some new information presents itself. Mike
@Tony Press So I decided to play with the lantern once again and I'm glad I did. Can you say charred? I figured the wick was going to get burnt, being that it's not soaking in liquid fuel. So I removed all of the wick and retested the lantern. Good news is the lantern still worked. Bad news, the output was noticeably weaker. I could actually stare at the mantle and see all of the little holes. Plan B, replace only enough wick at the bottom below the scorch marks. That did the trick. Lantern starts normally per the instructions and is as bright as it was before, and there is no pulsing. Mike
Ideally you need asbestos string to pack a generator. It's not a problem when it is in place, it's only the handling before and after where you have to be careful.
I have personally used the copper braided screen/shield found on certain electrical signal cables to pack a lantern generator instead of asbestos. It does not burn up or crumble into tiny particles which might clog up the nozzle orifice. Excellent results so far. Prevented some initial fuel surges during start ups. Reckoned that it also function as a strainer and a restrictor which might well had reduce the likelihood of a pulsating lantern. Somewhat similar in effect to those that had used a brass gauze on a Petromax generator.
I'd have thought there's a chance that copper might oxidise and produce small particles of copper oxide which might block the jet - and turn the light a slight greenish colour, possibly. Just wondering aloud, really...
Well these copper braiding get darken after some use. Not sure if these would be releasing copper oxides into the fuel stream but from my experience using them, the jet seldom, if ever, get clogged from them. There are nickel plated screen braiding available(which I've tried as well), in case pure copper oxidizes too easily.
I've recently discovered through reassembling some 228F's and a 335 that the generators have a smaller inner spring with a bulge to prevent the cardboard tube from rising inside the generator tube.
