Trying to find information on an Empire Burner. It has slotted burner, 23" outside diameter, among other questions the main one:
Does the sloted burner mean it is for gasoline and not kerosene?
Thanks for any help.
Bob

The slotted burner plate will burn your choice of fuels, gasoline, kerosene, or both at once. The length of the main fuel vaporizer and the size of your main jets determine what fuel you are set up for. Correct me if I am wrong, it is getting late.... Through the early Stanley years, Stanley used a slotted burner for gasoline. In 1914 when Stanley went to a two fuel system,(kerosene) they went to a drilled burner. I have ran both types using both fuels in each type. I cannot tell and difference in performance between drilled and slotted burners. The drilled burner is harder to keep clean and with the high miles that I put on the Stanleys, I have to drill out the drilled burner plate every year to keep a good hot fire. I presently am using slotted Baker burner plates in 4 of our 5 Stanleys and I wouldn't change them out for anything else. A slotted burner grate's annual maintenance is very minimal.

SSssssteamer

Stanleys are said to have changed from the slotted burner to the drilled type when it was found to be too noisy with kerosene instead of gasolene - do you find the slotted type howls more? Also is it any more inclined to light back underneath? If you do need to clean it out it must be harder than redrilling the holes.

Mike

Dear Mike,
Correct, When the drilled burner get plugged up, it doesn't howl any more. :-) Both types howl I have found out. It has been often stated that a Baker burner (slotted) can out howl the best of them. I run 140 pounds main fuel pressure and # 53 jets with straight kerosene and my Baker burner really howls when it is cold air outside. When both the Stanley warms up and the air temperature is up to about 65 F. degrees or better, I don't have any howling, or hardly any. # 53 jets can flood a burner quickly with kerosene, so it is smart to give the main fuel vaporizer a quick warm up before giving it full main kerosene flow. A flooded burner can have fire coming out every where and it could be hard on the paint too. The slotted baker burners get cleaned once every five years or so whether they need it or not. A used hack saw blade with the set ground out of the teeth works quickly in clearing any dirt from the burner slots. Light backs are unheard of with both burner types if everything is tight so that no flame can ignite stray fuel vapors. The ignition will usually occur when the main fuel cycles on, or when it cycles off. There are fuel vapors sniffing around then without any main fuel pressure forcing them into the mixing tubes. On my 606, I looked under it the other day while firing up and I had lots of flame coming out from around my super heater holes in my burner wall. I was surprised that I never have any tube fires. The reason why is because I use kerosene which doesn't flash as quickly in cool air and most importantly are my velocity stacks on my mixing tubes. Known also as flares, they give me a boost of performance of about 5 to 10% and they don't let hardly any fuel to drift anywhere but into the mixing tubes. I bought them out of Australia and they are flow tested for maximum ram effect. On our Mt. Wagon, I don't have velocity stacks for lack of room for them, and last month I had a tube fire. The cause was fire escaping out of a blow down hole in the burner side wall. Patched that hole and no more tube fires. If I had Velocity stacks on the Mt. Wagon, I probably woudn't have had a tube fire and I wouldn't have found the fire belching out of the blow down hole. Pros and Cons. If you have a tube fire, take time to look for the cause.

Bob the Empire burner came in different styles. As far as I know they were all single venturi burners. Some had the slots as does the Baker but some had the buttons with drilled holes. See attachment.

Rolly



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2007 05:23PM by JW.

Since I made this initial post I have found some info. on the Empire or I believe they are also called Crubans. Also, I (now) believe that this burner (although slotted) was intened to burn kerosene.
It has a drilled hole pattern for the pilot that spells "EMPIRE" which is pretty interesting.

Thanks to all who have provided input so far, still much to learn...

Rolly, thanks for posting the photo of burner "buttons". I have found a previous thread on this forum that made mention of these, and were referred to as a "rosebud" pattern, I guess they look much like a rosebud on a torch.

Bob



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2007 01:37AM by mdsbob.

There is a US Patent for an oil burner with the word "EMPIRE" drilled into it. It was filed June 25, 1924 by Charles Uebelmesser of Manhattan, NY. The patent number is 1,547,629 and the file can be downloaded either by going to www.pat2pdf.org or by using the Google Patent website. Mr. Uebelmesser had about 10 or 11 steam or automotive patents that I can place.

Regards,

Ken

How's that patent CD coming, Ken?

Kelly

Hi Kelly:

The patent CD is pretty much done. I've been doing some extra cleanup on it although the current version works pretty well. I had to change things over to a patent DVD-ROM, even with compressed files I over ran the carrying capacity of a CD. The index is in MS Excel and runs a bit over 230 pages. I have no true idea how many pages of patents that would cover, would guess somewhere near 20,000 pages if you had to print it out. Kinda spooked me to realize that the only thing in the SACA storeroom bigger than just the index was the Doble notebooks.

I'm working on wooden patterns for my concept engine and trying to straighten out the condenser drawings. Hopefully I'll have the engine ready to run next year though I may have to beg or borrow a boiler to do some initial tests.

Regards,

Ken



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2007 05:51PM by Ken.

Ken
Thanks for posting the patent number.
There are different lengths on the Pilot housing that are not shown on the patent drawings. See attachment photos.

Rolly

Hi Rolly:

Sometimes it is fun to see the differences between what the designer originally patented and what eventually went into production.

Ken

I have both syles of Cruban burners. We use a slotted burner on my 1921 735 roadster and it makes enough heat to crise on the flat at 55mph. The pilot is also designed to run on kerosene, with a long vaporizer that goes around 4 times within the pilot casting. We run gas though utilizing the pilot tank with Coleman fuel. Allen Blazick