Good Morning, Busy with a 237. Did a pressure test and found a leak on the seam where the pump housing mounts to the fount. I am gong to have to attempt to solder the seam. Not something i have done before. I assume that i will destroy the nickel finish in the process - not that it is great anyway. There is some green gunk in the seam and i will have to use some acid to get it clean. Read in some posts that plumbers solder should be used. Do i use a small pencil torch and somehow keep heat away from other parts? Any advice on how to attempt this fix will be appreciated
If that was mine I would heat it up with a torch and take the whole pump tube out, clean it up and re-solder it in place, using flux paste (better than the flux inside solder for this kind of job) The trick it to use the minumum heat needed otherwise solder lets go in other parts of the lantern. If lucky you can get away with only a little damage to the nickel. I have not done this to a 237 so my caveat is that my advice is limited to general soldering. Having no fuel in the tank is wise and aslo removing anything with rubber seals. A smart thing to to is practice soldering on thin bits of metal before attempting this.. good luck...
H @Fireexit1 If that was mine I would heat it up with a torch and take the whole pump tube out, clean it up and re-solder it in place, using flux paste (better than the flux inside solder for this kind of job) The trick it to use the minumum heat needed otherwise solder lets go in other parts of the lantern. If lucky you can get away with only a little damage to the nickel. I have not done this to a 237 so my caveat is that my advice is limited to general soldering. I am not confident enough to remove the whole pump housing. i have started the cleaning process by pumping lacquer thinners through the leak and will follow that with acetone and finish off with a weak solution of hydrochloric. As @bp4willi mentioned i am hoping that it is hard soldered and my thinking is to use a low melt point solder in the joint to see if it will seal the pin hole first. Looking to see if someone has some Tempilaq or Tempindic in the range of the melting point of the solder to guide me.
If it is hard (silver) solder it will have a higher melt point than soft. On the upside air conditioning engineers do this all the time, you may have a friendly one ?
In my experience, Coleman always used soft solder joints on their brass founts. Soft solder of course melts at a much lower temperature than silver solder. I've had to fix a couple of these joints on nickel founts and sometimes one can simply re-flow the solder to get a seal, but sometimes one has to add a bit. The key is cleaning well and using a good flux. It really doesn't take a lot of heat so there's no reason to damage nickel. BTW that pump tube will not come out without damage to the fount or pump as it has a snorkel tube on it. Here's one I recently fixed on a 249 that lived a rough life.
Soft solder is more than sufficient. Silver solder will take too much heat and isn't necessary. You can use wet rags or paper towels as a heat sink to protect the rest of the fount. Like this. You can also use yellow ochre artist's pigment as a mask to prevent solder from sticking where you don't want it. Mix with a very small amount of water to form a paste, paint it on the area to be masked and do your solder job. The pigment will darken with heat but wash off with water after the job is done. I'd advise against use the hydrochloric as you will never get it completely neutralized and it will cause problems down the road.
Well that was nerve-wracking. Not the best job in the world. Patience with a micro torch and less shaking required. But she holds pressure and now can carry on with the rest.
Looks fine - and more importantly as you say it holds pressure now. You can tidy it up a little with wire wool. Don't forget to remove all the old flux as it is corrosive.
