Day 22 June 23 2019
Disappointing day for us, up early at 5am to drive to Kazan 600km away, but the car would not behave, we had constant backfires while driving and dragging flame when the gas flow switches off, this is when the gas ignites with a pop under the burner plate when the gas flow to the burner switches off.
We have a new undamaged burner plate, we cleaned the vaporizer, we tried 3 different sub burners. All we can think is that it’s a fuel issue, so we are going to try fresh fuel.
None of our 4 sub burners will burn with a blue flame, they are all yellow and fluffy. This means that the vaporizer does not get hot enough and leads to wet gas being fed to the main burner.
We are only able to get 92 or higher octane fuel, we have tried adding paraffin, but to no effect. we were using 80 octane in China and Mongolia.
If anyone has some suggestions on either problem please leave a comment.
We are now in Kazan, capital of Tartarstan, the 6th biggest city in Russia. An impressive modern city on the banks of the river Volga which we cross tomorrow.
P2PonSteam 
Hello Mitch, We are following you and your burner problem is like the problem we had with the original burner that did have some cracks that probably were not all patched sufficiently with fireclay. The thoughts I had were that the backfireing was caused by the Bio ethanol that is mixed in our fuel. The amount in the Netherlands is about 5 to 10 % currently. The effect of Bio ethanol in the fuel is as follows: Firsty the heating value is inferior to petrol but this does not harm as you would just burn more fuel. Secondjy the heat of evaporation required for the evaporation of the Bio ethanol is considerably more than the heat of evaporation of the petrol so the evaporator will act as a still evaporating the fuel content faster than the Bio component and thus resulting in an increased concentration of Bio ethanol. As the thermostate operates in the fuel phase the evaporator will not stop evaporating after the fuel is shut by the thermostate, but continue evaporating the content at a verry much reduced level. I noticed that at that moment the main fuel nozzle would pick up ignition from any leakage in the old burner and show a little about 1/2 ” flame from the nozzle that did not extinguish before the thermostate would open again and produce the normal gas flow from the burner. In this situation the little flame from the nozzle would ignite the backfire. Once I changed the burner with the new one you provided this problem did not occur again, partly because this burner did not have the level of leakage as the old one but also because I banned fuel containing Bio ethanol since. I do not know what fuel you have access to in Russia, but i think it is worthwhile to consider this possibility.
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Sorry you are running into problems. Anyway I get get some octane booster (I have a case I can send over) to give you an extra 8-10 points of octane and some fuel treatment additive to eliminate water vapor. Not sure how I could get that to you or get it through customs. I will try if you think it is worthwhile. Good luck getting over this hurdle. Thanks for the updates! Onward ho!
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I think octane level is irrelevant for an atmospheric burner like the White has . I think the problem is caused by too wide a range of the flamepoints of the different fractions in the fuel too high a flamepoint of one fraction will result in a destillation process in the evaporator and this results in a much heavier average content in the evaporator than the fuel in the tank. This will interfere with the proper operation of the thermostate. try to find out what the heaviest and lightest fuel componen are and keep these as close as possible together.
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We have had similar problems here with the fuel. My brother John is now running on our old usual 20% diesel in the unleaded petrol. I am certain that the ethanol causes the flame to be more “wishy -washy ” with little bright blue focus. It will also dissolve out diesel if there is too much of it in there and dump it in the burner pan where it eventually ignites and one is unable to turn it off as it is just a puddle of diesel. Using this 20% diesel is fine but my advice is to measure it well and not to exceed it as we both found out with hard to control fires.
On my later cars, I am now adding kerosene and am at present on Billy using about 80% kerosene and 20% petrol which is fine with smaller jets ( from 54 thou to 46 thou ) and rods in the shorter vaporizer. The pressure needs to be about 5-10 PSI more. I am heading towards 100% kerosene. I do find that the pilot light needs to be good. On my SG checking, kerosene is just a little lighter than diesel but it seems to need slightly smaller jets and a few PSI more pressure in the tank.
On the pilot lights, having cleaned all the tubes and they are still not good, you may need to reamer or drill out the main jet in the middle or it to No 55 drill (52 thou or 1.32 mm); I would bet that they are a little restricted as they slowly reduce in size. I keep a drill for this with a small brass tube on it to make it easily useable.
Keep it rolling, you have a lot of support here!
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