LiteOutdoors Ti Stove W/ Baffle Problems

[TexasCub]

Last night I tent camped and was all excited to use my LO 18” stove for the first time in an actual camping scenario, temp was in the low 20’s. First off I have the baffle they offer and the pipe is in the reverse position (pipe near door). So I get the stove going good and I close the door and open the dampener both on the pipe and on the stove all the way. The stove starts making this reverberating sound and smoke is puffing out of the thing into the tent. A lot of the smoke was coming out of the spaces around the leg bolt holes where the stove curves around. I could not get it to stop unless I opened the door and when you do that smoke comes out of there into the tent too. The Cimarron isn’t all that big and the smoke filling up in there sucked. Has anyone experienced something like this? Thinking the baffle was what caused this but don’t know.

 

[92xj]

Pop the door open next time. Your stove was starving for oxygen. Need to feed it a ton of oxygen to heat the pipe to create massive draft. Once all is heated you can then start fine tuning the dampers.

Or you had too much exhaust draft and closing off the pipe damper some could have helped. The baffle does interesting things but you can easily get the huffing and puffing out the intake holes as well as the leg holes without the baffle.

 

[camping1601]

Curious what other have to say about this. I have 16" TI Goat without a baffle and it does that enough to be a pain. I did add two vent holes to door and it helped some. Also it settles down once I get a good bed of coals in it and I'm only feeding it a piece or two at a time.

 

[dog812]

I found getting it started was always Smokey, didn't matter really what I did.
just leave your tent doors open till it gets rocking..then you will be good to go.

 

[darcytribe]

I would call Brennan at LO. He’ll get you straitened out.

 

[AustinL911]

Like 92xj said, it's starving for oxygen. Close the pipe damper some and open the door if you have to. Once it gets a good draft going, it'll run full-chooch like it's supposed to.

 

[ianpadron]

I have the Lite Outdoors stove and have experienced the vibrating/smoking stove of doom as well lol. It takes some getting used to, but it's all about creating the right amount of air flow. The vents and pipe valve are mission critical, learn how to manage them efficiently. I DO NOT use the damper, so that might play a role, but now that I have a couple trips under my belt, I seldom have any issues once the fire is burning hot enough.

92xj hit the nail on the head. There is a stream of gas being sucked into the fire and shot out of the top, interrupt that process and you're going to have a hotbox party real quick!

 

[CLibka]

My apologies for digging up such an old thread, but I was thinking about this today. I have the same issues and was never able to find the "balance" with the door closed. I ended up having to just keep the door cracked and the damper open. Anything else seemed to huff and puff or smoke us out. In a couple instances we had a backfire where it was oxygen starved then when the door was opened it added so much o2 it exploded! Made for an interesting few minutes. If you run it wide open like I ended up having to you run through the wood too fast and go too hot then too cold. Does anyone have any pictures of their LO 18" vent and damper settings running perfectly that I could use as an example? Thanks in advance!!

 

[mrbillbrown]

My apologies for digging up such an old thread, but I was thinking about this today. I have the same issues and was never able to find the "balance" with the door closed. I ended up having to just keep the door cracked and the damper open. Anything else seemed to huff and puff or smoke us out. In a couple instances we had a backfire where it was oxygen starved then when the door was opened it added so much o2 it exploded! Made for an interesting few minutes. If you run it wide open like I ended up having to you run through the wood too fast and go too hot then too cold. Does anyone have any pictures of their LO 18" vent and damper settings running perfectly that I could use as an example? Thanks in advance!!

That air starving, door rattling, need to leave the door open partially business, is why I sold my LO and went with the Smith Cylinder stove. Drove me nuts trying to find the right “balance”. When using crappy wood that would pop it scared me thinking I had to leave the door open and an ember was gonna fly out onto my gear. Moving to the Smith cylinder.....haven’t had an issue like that yet. No regrets swapping stoves at all.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mfllood3800]

I had no issues with this while using the baffle. I was careful to ensure the stove pipe extended in the stove body, but wasn't sealed off by the baffle, creating less draw from the pipe, exhausting smoke thru it. I quit using the baffle for 2 reasons.
1. we had good rain and out side wasn't as dry, and the regular spark arrestor was sufficient enough
- plus I have 2' of pipe sticking out of my tipi (Redcliffe) for the sole purpose of tipi protection from embers.
2. It was just more of a hassle to install.
- If I was in a dry barren area, I would probably bring it and install it for safety sake



If I remember the big cut out on the baffle goes to the rear , when switching the hole for stove pipe to be near the front.
Then the small hole is near the front, which forces the flow of everything including the smoke to go to the back of the stove body under the baffle, then back to the front on top of the baffle and out the pipe.
If the baffle is in incorrectly it will lead to drafting issues.

I think the baffle does help with "burn time".
But I never really saw a big enough gain to use it for that reason. Maybe the fire burns longer, but the heat given off is not noticed, as these don't pump out enough heat unless they are cooking pretty hot. They heat up a tipi quick, but cool off just as quick.

 

[LiteOutdoors]

My apologies for digging up such an old thread, but I was thinking about this today. I have the same issues and was never able to find the "balance" with the door closed. I ended up having to just keep the door cracked and the damper open. Anything else seemed to huff and puff or smoke us out. In a couple instances we had a backfire where it was oxygen starved then when the door was opened it added so much o2 it exploded! Made for an interesting few minutes. If you run it wide open like I ended up having to you run through the wood too fast and go too hot then too cold. Does anyone have any pictures of their LO 18" vent and damper settings running perfectly that I could use as an example? Thanks in advance!!

I'm going to try and get a video of the stove when it gets into its "vibrating stove of doom" stage and see if I can show everyone what I do to mitigate this. We just spent the last 2 weeks of November in a tent with stove, it did it from time to time (maybe once per night / once every 2 nights), but with a slight adjustment of the air vent I was able to bring it back to a normal burn quite easily. We were mostly burning wood with a diameter of 1"-2", however the stove is more likely to do this when you are burning twigs and such.

Stay tuned, I was going to make a video on the baffle this month anyway, so I'll add this one to the list of things to do.

 

[CLibka]

Awesome! Thank you very much.

 

[stratofisher]

Glad I saw this post as I did my first burn in the backyard today and had the puffing engine going with the Lite Outdoors XL stove. Not sure I was able to get the stove pipe hot enough with the baffle in place. Don't think I achieved the heat level to really set the pipe. Anyone else have issues getting the stove pipe hot enough to set it with he baffle installed? Baffle seamed to help hold the heat in the stove an burn time was good though.

 

[willfrye027]

So funny, I was burning in my stove yesterday too and got the puffing cylinder of death a few times and got smoked out twice. I was also using duraflame logs and some lighter fluid so that may have contributed lol. Seemed like once the pipe was hot and the log wasn’t a roaring fire then it burned smoothly.

 

[Bobbyboe]

Had the same issue with that stove. It was a pain in the butt. Returned it and got a SO medium stove. No problems since!

 

[willfrye027]

seems like it just needs a little bit more venting for air intake when it’s burning hot. Leaving the door slightly open seemed to do the trick, and usually it did not smoke out the tent. The downside of more vents would probably be less control over slow burn unless you had a way to close them. But I am no expert so this is just speculation. Gonna need to play around more but overall I was very happy to be in a t shirt reading my book in there while it was sleeting and snowing outside. Can’t wait to take it on a hunt

 

[stratofisher]

seems like it just needs a little bit more venting for air intake when it’s burning hot. Leaving the door slightly open seemed to do the trick, and usually it did not smoke out the tent. The downside of more vents would probably be less control over slow burn unless you had a way to close them. But I am no expert so this is just speculation. Gonna need to play around more but overall I was very happy to be in a t shirt reading my book in there while it was sleeting and snowing outside. Can’t wait to take it on a hunt

Were you able to get the pipe to set with the baffle in? My pipe doesn’t look like it set like the video shows.

 

[willfrye027]

Were you able to get the pipe to set with the baffle in? My pipe doesn’t look like it set like the video shows.

I don’t have a baffle in mine. After 3 hours of burning only the lower half of my pipe is set. I think it takes a while to get the whole thing burned it, but it did roll up just fine even though it wasn’t totally burned in. I did make the mistake of burning in the stove and pipe at the same time which kind of dented the stove and warped the back piece slightly. Cosmetic but annoying.

 

[Tman24]

Has anyone tried cutting the baffle shorter, so it’s not spanning the length of the stove?

I use a 4 dog night stove in the wall tent and that baffle pretty much just covers the stove pipe exit. Was thinking of doing that to my lite outdoors stove.
We didn’t even use the baffle this last hunting season because of the issues with getting smoked out. I find it burns a lot better without the baffle

 

[stratofisher]

Has anyone tried cutting the baffle shorter, so it’s not spanning the length of the stove?

I use a 4 dog night stove in the wall tent and that baffle pretty much just covers the stove pipe exit. Was thinking of doing that to my lite outdoors stove.
We didn’t even use the baffle this last hunting season because of the issues with getting smoked out. I find it burns a lot better without the baffle

How does the burn time vary with the baffle? That is my main desire to extend burn times. Don’t need max heat as the stove heats the Redcliff quickly.