Having purchased my MSR Dragonfly some years ago, I have neglected the maintainance and cleaning of the stove until such time as it has stopped working. I sent the stove to First Ascent, as per the MSR website instructions, with a payment of £15 for their trouble.

A few days later I receive a parcel with my stove returned. The stove has been examined, serviced, cleaned, items replaced that were defective, and tested with no extra charge.

I would like to thank First Ascent for an outstanding "no nonsense" service and recommend them to all at Outdoors Magic for their exceptional integrity.

WELL DONE

£15 sounds reasonable but it is very easy to sevice a stove.

Off the subject a little but for those who are not so lazy and use their gear a lot.

And for  those of you useing liquid fuels wishing to replace the priming pad which usually falls apart.  I recently tried  some 'Aga' (oil burning stove) wick cut to size to make a priming pad.  This stuff is very tough and will outlast the standard pad on any stove. 

Well Trevor I am not old enough to answer that question properly and my trusty trangia is still going 20 years on though we are talking about pressure stoves are we not! 

My humble opinion on this topic-

I think in the past people used their own inginuity to maintain their stoves and probably burnt 'dirtier fuels' such as deisel etc causing more problems with blocked jets etc.

A lot of people now burn coleman fuel or even canister gas and these fuels are very kind to stoves. (very little soot!)

I think as stoves have developed they have probably become more complicated than they used to be.  This is good as far as reliabliliy in use is concirned as jets are less likely to get clogged, stoves are faster to light and parts easier to clean in the field etc.  There are of course probably more parts to go wrong or loose...

I service my multifuel stove regularly and it is easy especialy if you have the service kit.  I think as stoves evolve less parts will be able to be repaired in the field or 'bodged together' till you can get the correct part.  This will be especially the case as stoves get lighter and parts smaller. 

In the future I predict the user will become more reliant on brand and stove specific parts and eventually the repair service.  15.00 sounds a lot to replace an 'o' ring to me...

Cheers Trevor

BTW I have spotted some reasonably cheap and 'suposedly' cleaner burning kerosene which has been designed with greenhouse heating systems in mind which I will be trying out in my multi fuel stove shortly.  It is suposed to smell much less than standard kerosene.

When I get some I will boil a pint of water using standard kerosene and then let the stove cool and do the same with the stuff I recently spotted and compare soot on bottom of pan, priming, smell, etc.

I have the new fuel and will try it out at the weekend.

Yes white gas is a rip off if you ask me! Oh, as is petrol from the pump, err did I mention deisel...

OK, here it is, not perfect!

The test certainly showed that there were significant differences between the fuels at least.  During the test the wind was gusty and variable and this may have affected the results to some degree.

1 The standard kerosene seemed to boil the water quicker( I did not time the boil time!)

2 The standard kerosene smelled stronger in it's raw state as well as when being burn't.

3 The standard kerosene left less soot on the pan bottom.

4 The standard kerosene soot was harder to remove from the pan bottom.

From the results I would say both fuels worked well in the stove and from the limited test results I would stick with normal kerosene.  It seems that the standard kerosene burns hotter which would explain the harder to remove soot and aparent faster boil time.  There are pics of the results in my gallery and you can click the link below.

test pics