Whilst on holiday in Germany (Saarburg) I purchased a new Petromax HK150 from a local hardware store.
That evening I read the instruction manual and fitted the mantle and lit the lamp. It worked perfectly as you can see from the following photo:
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After about 3 hours of use and at the end of that evening I opened the manometer release valve (13) to release the pressure, allowed the light to extinguish and burn off all the fuel in the tubes and then closed Grip Wheel (111).
The following evening flush with the success of the first use I attempted to use the lamp again. Obviously I did not need to install a new mantle. I repeated the starting procedure but could not get the mantle to ignite correctly. All I could get was the mantle burning with an orange flame and flames coming from the hood (123). The glass cylinder and hood became sooted with carbon deposits as did the mantle and I gave up for the evening.
The following night I decided to try again with a new mantle having cleaned the hood & glass cylinder. I also took the opportunity to check and adjust to 7mm the gap between the Spray Nozzle (50) and the Emulsion Tube (33). Initial results looked promising but this time after about 20 minutes of operation the mantle ceased to burn with a brilliant white glow and was now burning with a red/orange glow with orange flames visible on the outside of the mantle and starting to appear in the hood also. The mantle was also developing black sooty areas.
I have recorded a video to try and show the problem, sadly in daylight it is not as obvious to see and I didnt have 20 minutes of recording capacity but you can start to see the effect.
Please watch THIS and give me some ideas on what I am doing wrong or what I need to do to the lamp to make it work.
Unfortunately at this point in time I am not too impressed with the legendary quality of German products (1 success from 4 attempts so far!)
Thankyou for taking the time to read and watch this and for any pointers you may have.
