Hi Gary,

I tried Mineral Spirits, up to 50% mix with kerosene, with little improvement.

But...

while I havn't run it long enough to be sure, I think I found the culprit and fixed it.

As I type this it has been running for almost 30 hours with no problems. The wind has been calm, but the temperature dropped to about 20F last night and the flame looked "normal" this morning at 7AM. Nice even flame, no flickering, no smoke, no heavy soot on the globe, all appears well.

Tomorrow it is supposed to be rainy and windy, really miserable in fact... that will be a good test. If it survives, I tell you what I found

Of course, the Kirkman #2 is still out there running at "idle speed", totally unaffected for the last 6 months by anything. It is a really low maintenance lantern... just fill it every few days, clean the globe once a month, change the wick every 3 months, and it runs 100%.

I have come to depend on the street lamp at night, even more so now that it gets dark at 4PM, so I ordered a second hooded Kirkman #2 with a post adapter to have as a backup for the street lamp if I have to take it "out of service for maintenance" again. This time I went with a copper reflector which should age to go well with the green color that I have planned for the rest of the lantern.

Of course, I know just a tiny bit more today than I did last week so next time this problem might only aggrevate me for only 15 minutes instead of a week.

Rick