For the last 20 years, rather than the Stanley burners, I have been running Baker Burners in my Stanleys. The Bakers are supposed to give you more heat than a Stanley burner. But, the Bakers also give you more of a howl. My burner pan on my 1916 Stanley Mt Wagon burned out in the back where the super heater passes through. I shortend the 30 hp Baker burner pan up by about two inches. The wall above the grate went from about 4.5", down to about 2.5 inches high. The critter howls so bad now that I can hardly stand it. Before, once it got hot, it hardly howled at all. On my 1914 Stanley, after about 20 years of rust and heat, the burner pan wasn't worth trying to fix it for the extra holes that had rusted and burned through its pan. I made a new burner pan out of 20 gauge 310 Stainless steel that is good up to about 2100 degrees F and it is also rust proof. I raised the burner wall by 1/2" inch. It went from about 4" to about 4 1/2" tall above the burner grate. Before the burner howled more than it should. Now it doesn't howl except only when firing up. No one has ever mentioned that a deeper burner pan reduces burner howl. Apparently the depth of the burner pan is directly related to the amount of howl that the Baker burner will make. I also lengthened my super heater from 6 feet to about 10 feet and it made a lot of difference too. Now it has noticably more power on the hard hills. My super heater is made out of 1/2" schedule 40 stainless steel pipe. I found that I got a smoother bend by bending the pipe cold than by putting heat to it. I used a re-bar bender to do my bending. My pattern is a zig-zag with 4 runs. It fit just right in my 23" diameter burner. I have followed the Stanley directions by finally mounting the super heater firmly to the boiler retaining ring. By leaving it unsecured to rattle about, that is what runined both of my burner pans.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2009 04:29AM by SSsssteamer.

Good information Pat. Thanks

When I rebuilt my Stanley burner I added a two-inch ring assembly that attached to the boiler, The burner attached to the ring assembly adding two inches to of extra depth to the burner pan. I had drilled extra holes in the burner bring the total to 6000 holes.
The burner never howled, I never gave a thought to the extra depth.
The ring assembly allowed the burner to be dropped with out braking the seal around the superheater and boiler fitting.

Rolly



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2009 09:10AM by Rolly.

Thank you for a good idea Rolly. I will add the two inches back to my Mt. Wagon's burner the same way, by adding a seperate ring. That will eliminate that terrible howl. SSsssteamer

You may find the deeper pan helps but it may not. A burner, fired up in the open away from the boiler can still howl as the source of the noise is a resonance in the mixing tubes (like blowing across the top of bottle).

I have a bit of video of my burner fired up in the open and it howls most when the fuel is not fully vaporised as it starts up. It seems to howl strongest when the flame is yellow or has flecks of yellow which I guess are unvaporised droplets of fuel getting through. When the flame is quite clear, without these flecks, which it is once the burner is hot, the howl stops.

Mike

Dear Mike, That makes a lot of sense of why our burners howl more when they are still warming up. Once they are warm, then the yellow should be about gone from the tips of our flame. Usually the burners on our Stanleys really quiet down once everything is up to operating temperature. I am going to add a 1 1/2" spacing ring between the burner and boiler on my Mt. Wagon in hopes that it will quiet it down. I will let you know if it helps or not. Presently, it has become just too loud.

I've always run my burner at 120psi, thinking that a higher pressure would make it howl as it seemed close to howling fairly often. Yesterday I upped the pressure to 140psi - result still no howl except when cold and a significant improvement in steamimg. We did a run of 144 miles, the last 30 miles in pouring rain and the car ran perfectly. Pretty damn hard to see the sight gauge with no windscreen and all that wet though!

I also put a new diaphragm in the steam auto as the old one had become quite distorted. Classic case of bad experiment as the response of the auto changed from how it had been before and I don't know whether it's due to the changed pressure or changed diaphragm! It now modulates according to steam demand rather than being more or less on or off. Most of the time when we are cruising steadily the boiler gets up to pressure well before the vaporiser pressure gets up to 140psi (pressure gauge on vaporiser connection) and only when there is a hill or the speed is over 40mph do we see the full 140psi.

Mike

Well, I didn't add a spacer ring, but I replaced the shortened sidewall with new metal and I also put in a new liner. I took the Baker burner that I had shortened to where it was 2 1/2" from the top of the burner grate to the bottom of the boiler fire tubes, and I put it back up to 4 1/2" from the top of the burner grate to the bottom of the boiler fire tubes. What a difference! The decible level is now about only half as when I had the shorter burner pan. What I did discover is that it still howels just as much, but it is so quiet now, that you hadly even notice it.