I believe I was dealing with not one, but 2 issues.
I was out there in the cold messing with things last night while it was windy, trying to figure out why the flame was so wind sensitive. I don't remember it being that sensitive, in fact I am sure it was not that sensitive up untill very recently, but all of a sudden it was.
On this sort of lamp the base is hollow. The mounting post goes up into the hollow hole.
This hollow area is open to the combustion air path coming from the air tubes and going up to the burner thru two hollow passageways in the font. If the post does not fit properly, there is effectively an air leak and the draft tubes get bypassed.
Up untill now, by accident I am sure, I apparently had the lamp squarely mounted on the post. The post bottomed out completely on the stop up there in the mounting hole and apparently sealed it off, allowing the air draft tubes to do what they are supposed to do. Somehow, during all this wind and messing trying to get it to work right, the lamp got cocked enough that the tight seal was gone. There is about a 60 thousanths clearance between the lamp and my post. It was enough to allow air (and wind) to sneak in. In fact, when I took it down to clean it I wiped off some sort of bug nest that had been formed in this small gap. Maybe the bugs were helping seal the gap. Anyway, without a tight seal the lamp was very sensitive to wind. I wound up stuffing duct seal clay in the gap between the post and the lamp base and the wind issues went away... end of problem #1.
I thought I had it licked, but I went away for a while and when I came back it was out again. I relit it and watched it for quite a while. It would go from a really nice flame to all of a sudden a smokey, uneven flame. Then the flame would die out.
I had already dumped and refilled the font, cleaned the lamp, and changed the wick, loosened the fill cap to make sure there was proper font venting, so I was running out of ideas.
Today at work I kept thinking about it, and started wondering if either I did not get all the water out of the tank when I dumped it or else my small railroad style kerosene can that I fill from had gotten water in it as well.
I stopped by the auto parts store on the way home and got some gas line antifreeze. I had used it quite a bit last winter in one of my #39's, so I figured it would be worth a shot again. When I got home I put an ounce or so into the font and relit the lamp. That was 4 hours ago and it is still burning perfectly. I think that is probably the longest it has gone without going out since the weather hit last week, so maybe I have solved the mystery.
I guess I will have to wait a bit for more crazy New England weather to be sure, but whatever happens I will report back as to the outcome.
Rick
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