Two weekends ago I welded up the 190D exhaust again, that makes attempt #3. While its a pain I'm getting kind of good at pulling the pipe down, welding up and reinstalling relatively quickly. This time it had about a 3" crack which I covered with a piece of cutoff exhaust pipe I had hanging around the garage. In the past I'd made my repairs from strips of sheet metal but this method is much faster. I took the car to work last Thursday and all was fine, Friday when I tried to take it to work it was worse than before, rats. Saturday I ordered a new pipe and new rear brake pads. Angie has been complaining about the pads squeaking which could be from using Car Quest brand pads. I ordered Pagid which are OE Mercedes and supposedly won't squeak. They're easy enough to change and cheap enough that I'll give it a shot.
Yesterday I got a new lantern in the mail. I haven't ordered anything on eBay in a long time and I'm not sure what prompted me this time but I found what turned out to be a very nice 228C from May 1946 for a really good price:
In the end, with shipping it was less expensive than my 228B and in comparable shape. Now I really need to get to work on my 228D which I've had for maybe 2 years with no movement.
Of course before I get to that I've been DYING to play with an inverted Kamplite I bought at the convention. I paid $40 which I understand is a really good price. This one has a dent just above the globe but it doesn't effect operation at all. I'd tried to light it at the convention but the FA tube appeared to be clogged. These have a very odd FA tube because the fuel pickup sticks into the fount upside down, basically everything is backwards on these.
The pickup has a very small hole in the side covered by a metal screen which you can just barely make out in the picture. When I removed the screen I could shoot brake cleaner through the tube and it would just barely get out the side hole. I soaked the tube in citric acid for 10 minutes, then polished with steel wool and pricked the hole with a 200A pricker rod and now brake cleaner shoots out that hole in a stream.
After reassembly I was a little worried when I didn't get that familiar gurgle but the lantern lit with no hesitation:
Its loud, and when shutting down it pops hard. Like other King Sealy lanterns (Kamplite, Thermos and other AGM derivatives) it doesn't have a burner screen. This one has a few holes in the burner head to act kind of like a screen but its not the same. To prevent the popping from blowing out the mantle I turned the cleaning rod which worked great. Strangely my Thermos lantern doesn't pop on shutdown at all despite not having burner screens.
Anyway next on the list is the Day Lite lantern which is a Petromax clone I also bought at the convention. It ran for awhile but now just flames up. I think it had an iffy gas jet as I can swap in the one from the Wenzel and its better. I'd originally intended to just fix this lantern but then the Wenzel's foot valve failed so I ended up ordering some $50 worth of parts. I'd like to use the Day Lite as a test bed to help me really understand Petromax and then maybe do a rebuild video with the Wenzel.
In other news I recently shot another episode of Lantern Lab which I'm not really happy with. I rushed and it shows, especially in the lighting. I'm going to play with the footage some but I suspect it'll fail to impress me and I'll need to reshoot.
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