Restoring and Rebuilding a 1950s Petromax Lantern
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- In this video I restore and rebuild a heavily used and abused Petromax 828 lantern from the 1950s. The video includes a bit of history, detailed disassembly and reassembly, as well as techniques for cleaning, polishing, and restoring components and sources for rebuild kits and parts.
Jan Moeller's illustrated cleaning and restoration guide:
www.eschaefer.de/hobbys/stark...
Maintenance Kit from Imperial Lighting:
imperiallightingco.com/produc...
Maintenance Kit from Lehman's:
www.lehmans.com/product/petro...
Complete parts catalogue from Petromax:
www.petromax.com/c/petromax-h...
www.petromax.com/c/petromax-h...
www.petromax.com/c/petromax-h...
www.petromax.com/c/petromax-h...
Video Content
00:00 Intro & History
10:38 Disassembly
28:32 Parts Clean-up
33:31 Polishing
36:34 Restoring Lettering on the Knob
38:52 Assembly: Check Valve and Pump
47:20 Assembly: Valve and Carburetor
57:12 Assembly: Rapid Preheater
01:05:29 Assembly: Inner Hood and Burner
01:13:35 Final Light-up - Jak na to + styl
Excellent video and restoration. In UK & Ireland these are seen as a bit exotic and complicated. A testament to your skills and knowledge that you got it working again. Generally in UK and Ireland the Tilley, bialaddin and vapalux are more common. I have one of these in fairly good condition except that the rapid heater keeps going out so I have to either do a soft start or hold a lighter to the rapid heater. I did try starting it with a lower pressure, to no avail. Thanks for sharing this restoration.
Thank you! A lot of memories 45 years ago. I was in charge of lighting this thing up for my family.
Thanks for the great information video.
I no longer need videos for most lanterns, but this is a horse of a different color, and I have a couple of these I need to get running, and your videos will be very helpful.
Thanks for what you do.
God bless.
I just bought a petromax 829 today with a metal carrying case. The case look like german army case. Cant wait to receive it and light it. The rapid design is clever,no need to carry another fluid to preheat. The petromax can also run on diesel in worst case senario but probably more dirty than kerosene.
I'd suggest Tilley is probably better known than Petromax, certainly in countries with a British sphere of influence. In Australia I find more Tilleys, Austramax, Bialladin and Colemans and dont recall seeing a petromax.
That's true in Britain and Australian (probably New Zealand). In Canada it's Coleman. It's Petromax pretty much everywhere else. India is significant producer of Petromax clones.
I bought my Petromax lantern at Classic Outdoors, in Canada. They also sell parts, shades and mantles.
Thanks. That's good to know. Google came up with nothing when I looked for Petromax in Canada. It's interesting that Classic Outdoors sells the rebuild cit for $21.95 (I assume Canadian), which less than half the price in the US.
Once again Beautiful job
Well it’s European in origin, so the screw is probably metric. Unfortunately I do not have access to a screw gauge but probably use a digital micrometer set for millimeters and read the OD of the screw. Most often thread pitch will be directly related to screw diameter when dealing with metric hardware.
Nice job as always!
Well saved!👍👍
Nice fettling! Congratulations. Did you replace those two lead washers from the tank? (rapid and valve)
Yes. Everything came in the rebuild kit and was replaced.
Great video, very informative.
Couple of questions:
- what do you use to keep the generator clean? How often do you clean the generator?
- what life (hours of use) do you expect to get between rebuilds?
- can you run shellite/Coleman fuel through the Petromax?
How does it compare with a Coleman Northstar in terms of light output (lumens)?
The cleaning needle keeps the gas jet clean. The generator itself is designed to last the life of the lantern. They're not like North American lanterns, where the generator is considered a consumable. If it were to get coked up and clogged, you could heat and quench to break up the carbon. No, these do not run gasoline or naphtha. The light output will vary with the model. As I said in the video, they come in varieties from 150cp up to 500cp. The brightest is comparable to a Northstar.
@@king.coleman mate, thanks for the quick response. Much appreciated.
Hello friend, greetings from Brazil, I love your very good videos but I hate to disagree with parts of your answer, the petromaxes are great and durable yes, but even the way you turn them off can accumulate kerosene and mud inside this circuit and the operation It takes an hour and removing this residue is terrible, I use vinegar to clean everything, but this part or ring of the generator is a tedious process if it is clogged, so I use ultrasound and also the wax cleaner which in this case I don't use I don't know if do you have it in your country... thank you the video is great
Where do you source replacement gaskets and o-rings for stoves and lanterns? I really enjoy your videos. Thanks!
For this Petromax lantern, I bought the rebuild kit sold by Imperial Lighting. I buy Coleman/AGM size fuel cap gaskets from a fellow collector who makes them and Coleman Easi-lite o-rings from a local auto parts store, but everything else from Old Coleman Parts. They don't sell Petromax parts, but they've got pretty much anything you'll need for lanterns and stoves of North American origin, Coleman and non-Coleman.
oldcolemanparts.com
Nice video. Thank you 👍🏻. Do you know how to decode the date stamp that’s engraved at the bottom of the lamp.
Petromax used a variety of date codes over the years...and, like mine, not all of their lanterns have a code stamped or engraved. Your best bet is to check the forum at Classic Pressure Lamps a there are some discussion there that include not only information on the various date codes, but how to date based on design changed through the years.
I am in the process of fixing one but i am stuck. What you do in the video at 18:41 does not happen for me. The bolt is loose but it does not want to come out. Shaking, using a stick with sticky stuff. Nothing works. Any suggestions?
I'm not sure what to tell you. I can't think of easy reason why it wouldn't fall out of the pump tube once it's fully unscrewed. If you've unscrewed it all the way, there's nothing left to hold it in place.
I had the exact same problem. It wasn't until I filled it almost full of acetone. I let it sit for an hour, sloshed it around again and again, let it sit for another hour and did the same thing. As I dumped it back into the container, I kept getting chunks of gritty, brown material out. As I shook more and more and lightly banged it down on my padded bench, the brass bolt finally came out (I had unscrewed it for a bit before). Apparently, the brown crud I was banging out had been on the end of that brass screw and retained it. All clean now!
Do you repair lanterns? I have a Butterfly 828 that I've just about given up on (because I don't know what I'm doing). I can't get it to hold pressure. It's a beautiful lantern and I'd love to use it, but it's difficult to find anyone to send these to for repair as that knowledge seems to be dying out year after year.
Sorry, I do not. I don't have the time and don't want to take on the liability. I think the video and the guide I linked to in the comments should get you started. That said, the build quality of the Butterfly lanterns is pretty poor and my (limited) experience with them wasn't great. You should be able to get it running, but they're pretty finicky and always seem to need something adjusted.
@@king.coleman If the build quality is considered lousy, I guess there's really no point trying to get it running.
Thanks for the prompt response.
@@snowdogthewolf If it won't hold pressure and it isn't rusted through somewhere, you probably got a bad gasket somewhere. If it's only leaking air and not fuel, you can be fairly certain it's not one of the valve pips. It's more likely to be a poor seal where the main valve or the preheater screw into the fount. On the real deal there's a crushable lead gasket at those points. I don't recall if Butterfly is the same or uses rubber.
@@king.coleman Thanks for that. Some of the gaskets appear to be made of cork. It's an odd set-up. I'm more into Aladdin lamps that don't require pressurization and bought the butterfly because it was kind of pretty. Maybe I'll see if I can find a gasket kit for this thing.
Maybe a screw from an eyeglass repair kit would work for the monometer/fuel cap
I found a number of small screws that work as far as diameter goes. The problem is that this screw is incredibly short. I though about cutting one down, but I don't have the tools or skills to do precisely enough.
@king.coleman if the small screw kit comes with matching nuts you could put a nut on then use a dremel with cutoff disc. When you unscrew from the nut it should repair the threads.
It's even shorter than that. It holds the gauge cover to the manometer. The screw threads into the outer wall and there's at most room for a single turn of the the threads inside that. It immediately hits the inner wall. The threaded portion of the screw is, maybe, a millimetre long and would take some precision tools to cut from a longer screw. It's not surprising that it fell out at some point.
⚫🔴🟡 Super Video
I have a couple of Swiss army surplus lanterns. They are Petromax/Geniol 250CP Lamps. Can I use parts from the kit you have in the link to rebuild them or do I need something else? They run on gasoline or white gas not kerosene.
I'm not familiar with those. It wouldn't surprise me if some parts are interchangeable, but I expect that most of the fuel system components for a gasoline burner would be different.
All the lead washers, rubber seals, springs and graphite packing are the same for 150cp, 250cp, 350cp and 500cp lanterns.
@@yorksploughboy803 Thanks.
Yes, but are they the same for a model designed to burn gasoline?@@yorksploughboy803
Yes they are the same. @@king.coleman
You missed out on the UK lamps, under the name TILLEY.
I'm familiar with them, but they're exceptionally rare around here and when they do turn up, the asking price is always multiple times what Petromax models sell for.
@@king.coleman wow