52 Flying Cloud Dixie stove

[WillJamison]

I am planning on using the original Dixie stove in my 52 Flying cloud restoration. I could not find much in the forums or google for an owners manual. I am wondering about the tubes that direct gas from the burners to the center of the stove. It looks like you can have a small flame at the center(I think this is turned of) then when the burner is turned on it should light from the center flame. I am OK with using a lighter, but I do want to know how it all works, Anyone have a copy of the manual? The other question I have is when the oven is on the stove gets quite hot. I'm guessing the insulation is packed down at the bottom of the stove. I would like to install better insulation than fiberglass, what should I use? Thanks for your replies. Will

[rugjenkins]

I love your stove. Very cool

[rmkrum]

The part in the center of the 4 tubes from the burners is the pilot light assembly. There may be a screwdriver adjustment to control the size of the pilot flame in the gas line on the left of the picture. Can't tell from the picture. The flame is typically rather small. Note that this is NOT a safety pilot, so if it blows out you are dumping flammable/explosive propane into the enclosed trailer, ready to go boom with a stray spark. I'd leave the pilot turned off, and continue lighting the stove top burners with a BBQ lighter or a hand held stove spark ignition device. Be VERY careful with old stuff like this...

The way it is supposed to work is that with the pilot flame lit, turning on a burner bleeds a little gas into the smallish tube that reaches to the center pilot assembly. The pilot flame ignites that bit of gas, and the flame that is started travels right back up the same tube to the burner and then lights it all the way around the burner (hopefully). It's a very old system that constantly wastes a bit of gas to provide the pilot flame.

From the looks of the stove, it needs a lot of clean and refurbish effort. If it has an oven, I'd bet on a lot of rust in there as well. If you are going to use this thing, I'd be darn sure to have it leak checked and adjusted by an expert propane technician. It could have problems that are not obvious to ordinary folk...

The oven insulation--abbout the only thing that can take the heat is unface and unbacked plain fiberglass. May be worth the effort to replace it, because rodents love to make nests in fiberglass insulation, and it does settle with age and traveling.