Cleaning
flint residue

No sparks
silted up flint spring

Burner valve
hardened rubbers
butane residue

              

Repairing butane lighters is in fact a job for experts, not for amateurs! Therefor if you try to repair your own lighter, always be aware you're handling a (malfunction) piece of machinery containing liquid gas (under pressure!).

Notice the following tips:

- Do NOT disassemble a lighter near open fire.

- Do NOT smoke.

- Be sure to ventilate the room you are working in.

- Test your lighter in water, NOT with a flame (about this later!).

Cleaning:

Often a lighter (with flint) is very dirty and, after many years of use, difficult to clean. A hard brush causes often scratches on the casing and is often not able to remove all the dirt in the tiny corners. A better way is to dismantle the whole lighter. First of all, make sure the butane is out of the tank (a Premier for instance can carry a lot of fuel inside!). Release the gas with a loose nipple from a refill gas-can (don't do this inside the house and don't smoke while you are doing this!). Retry this several times. Cause of releasing the gas, the lighter will cool down, holding rest gas inside! Disassemble the lighter. Take a good look how the sparkwheel with the clutch-spring is placed in the snuffer (you have to replace it later in the same way!). Be aware of the operating spring.

Leave the burner valve and the inlet valve in the lighter. At the same time look if the old flint is stuck in the tank. If so, remove it with a metal pin. Make a bowl with washing powder and hot water. Dump all parts in this bowl and let it rest for about 1 to 2 hours. DO NOT PUT LEATHER PARTS OF THE LIGHTER IN THIS BATH! You'll be amazed how new your lighter will look.

Remove the parts to dry. Do not loose any small parts as screws and springs. Polish the parts with a cloth and make sure all parts are completely dry (this will prevent rusting).

If your lighter functioned well, you can assemble the lighter at this point.

Leaking gas / irregulated flame:

The lighter still disassembled, fill the tank (shortly) with little butane gas. Place the tank in a glass of water to find out where the gas bubbles leave the burner valve. If the bubbles come from underneath the adjusting wheel (gas regulator), the burner leaks at nr. 3. The bubbles come, of course, out of the little nozzle on top of the burner. If you push this little pin and still gas is coming out of there the burner leaks at nr. 1. (see picture on the left). It's not common to leak at nr. 2 (the place where the burner valve is screwd into the tank). If your burner does not leak, but the flame is irregular, then probably the burner is just dirty with residue after combustion. This is a oily residue of the butane left in the nozzle.

Solution: dismantle the burner of an old 'throw-away-lighter'. Inside this (plastic) burner you can find the two parts you need to repair your own Ronson burner. Let the gas out of the tank (be careful !!). Remove the burner valve from the tank by turning it in the right direction (English thread!). Remove the upper adjusting screw (normal left direction). Don't loose the little spring!  Clean all parts with white spirit to remove any residue. When the leaks occur replace rubber nr. 3. Replacing nr. 1. is quite difficult. Remove the old rubber inside the nozzle with a small needle. Make sure all rubber is out of this nozzle. Take the small rubber from the throw-away-type (size about 2 mm. / diameter 1 mm.). Place this rubber with industrial power glue ('Loc-tite') in the nozzle. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Place the nozzle in a drill (rubber outside) and let this machine turn slowly while cutting the rubber back to 0,5 mm. length.

Reassemble the burner into the tank. Test it again for leak in a glass of water. If it's ok, you can assemble the whole lighter. Be careful adjusting the flame for the first time.

Inletvalve repair of a Ronson lighter;

This job is definately not meant for amateurs. It needs great skills and precise work to finish the job. You need to be very careful, cause it’s fragile and can easily become dangerous cause of the gas under presure!

In contrast with the burner you cannot open the inletvalve. On the drawing you can see under A a cross_section of the inletvalve when it is not used during filling the tank with butane. The rubber (see the red rectangles) is a flat rubber ring which fits to the outer side and to the metal pen inside te nozzle. In this way the gas will not come out of the valve when the gas is injected into the tank (look at B).

This ring is often worn down, dried causing the valve to leak. The lighter will not hold its gas and this you hear by the hissing sound at the valve.

Solution:

Behind the spring (see the grey circles in the drawing) the brass is somewhat bented so the spring cannot leave the tube. With a small round pliers you can try to open gently the brass. Open this brass slowly, otherwise you will easily crack the metal.

Once it’s opened you can take out the spring and the gaspen (first take off the small brass ring at the front of the valve (yellow)).

Just take out the residu of the old rubber ring (red) and clean the inside of the valve. Take a new small ring out of a throw-away-lighter and place this where first the old ring was. Replace the gaspen and the spring. Refit the brass to close the valve again at the back (see at F how you can do this). Use a vice and try not to injure your fingers!

The situation is now the same as in picture C. The inletvalve is now gasproof. However the new rubber probably does not fit the metal pen tightly causing gas flow out of the lighter while trying to fill it. You are loosing gas, you get icecold fingers and it’s dangerous when this liquid gas comes in the room!

To solve this last problem you must put also a rubber ring between the valve and the little brass ring at the front (yellow). While filling the ‘yellow’ ring will crunch the rubber and in this state the gas is unable to leave the tank (look at picture D).

At E you can see how a fine round pliers pushes the spring in. While you turn the pliers easily the soft yellow brass will open. When the spring comes out, you have opened the valve far enough.

After renewing the rubbers it is of course important to close the inletvalve again, preferably in original state. In the factory where these things were made they had a machine who would did this. As restaurer you probably does not have one. I surely did not! Therefor I made a simple tool myself to gain the same effect. I took a round piece of metal and drilled an opening at the front. The bottom of this hollow I polished round. The proces: Place a small steel ball on the spring (backside of the valve up). I used the little ball you can find at the bottom of the Ronson Premier burner. Push the steel ball in with the metal pen. Give some gentle hits with a small hammer on the metal pen. The brass of the valve will bent back to its original place. After that, you can remove your tool and the steel ball (look at picture F).

New and easy to find parts for your lighter-repair:

I often advised you to use parts of throw-away-lighters. However, there are many sorts for lighters to find and which one do you realy need. Therefor I placed some pictures above of the ones you can use. The piëzo shown in the picture you can alse use, but there is a large scale of formats. You cannot always use this one in your ´modern´ lighters. The shown rubber rings you can always use on your Ronson-lighter parts.

Note: We are not responsible for the consequences of any kind caused by improper use of the materals advised in this site.

We cannot say it enough: Be VERY careful during the proces; YOU WORK WITH BUTANE GAS IN A PRESSURIZED TANK !