Things To Consider If Your Vintage Cigarette Lighter Doesn’t Work

I get questions every day where people are looking for help to get their old lighters back into working condition to use for their intended purpose. While not every broken lighter can be repaired, there are a few things to consider if your vintage cigarette lighter doesn’t work that will help you determine the quickest way to get it back up and running smoothly.

What Kind Of Fuel Does It Use?

If I’m going to be any help to get an unworking lighter back up and running then it’s going to need to be fueled by petrol lighter fluid. There are businesses and people who repair butane fueled lighters but they are few and far between in comparison to those who repair petrol fueled lighters.

Rubber o-rings and seals in derelict butane lighters dry out, crack or disintegrate over time causing fill valve and burner valve joints to leak. While evaporation or leaking of fuel from a petrol lighter may be a nuisance to some, leaking butane can be a much more serious problem as butane fuel is under pressure and thus much more volatile. A flame that ignites off petrol that has leaked onto the skin of the hands is easily snuffed whereas a rogue, unrestrained butane torch flame can burn the skin much quicker and be more difficult to extinguish.

Petrol lighters function from the draw of fuel vapor up the wick from a fuel tank that typically contains absorbent wadding material under the fill screw where the lighter is fueled. Butane lighters produce a flame from a metal valve in the chimney area and are filled through a valve under the fill screw.

What Causes Its Spark?

Just as there are lighters that function off fuels other than petrol or butane, there are lighters that achieve their spark by means other than flint or piezoelectric ignition. There are older rasp and file configurations and lighters that used rolled paper caps along with newer, battery operated electric ignitions but over the course of the history of cigarette lighters the two most prominent methods of ignition have been flint ground against a file wheel and the piezoelectric varieties.

While piezoelectric mechanisms are typically pretty durable and endure for a good length of time, they are not renewable when they fail. I have seen folks in the Facebook lighter groups and other online forums over the years who claim to be able to fix them but I have never discovered or seen explained a repeatable method to do so.

Flints do have a tendency to disintegrate or turn to concrete over time, especially when exposed to moisture or other unsuitable atmospheric conditions but can usually be dug or drilled out of the tube without too much effort and then a new flint can be installed. A properly maintained flint sparked lighter can be renewed rather quickly by replacing the spent flint with a new one whereas a failed piezo sparked lighter is likely useless.

Is The Wick And Wadding Structurally Sound?

I fuel up and strike a lot of old petrol lighters that retain their original wick and wadding. Some times they fire right up and work like a champ, other times they flicker or wane and quickly show themselves to be unable to sustain a usable flame.

Fueling a petrol lighter properly may be a more nuanced proposition than many lighter enthusiasts imagine as too much or too little fuel can each equally cause their own problems. A lighter which is filled with too much fuel can suffer from vapor lock which we will discuss below but even a slightly under-filled lighter can cause problems too.

A petrol lighter can contain sufficient quantity of fuel to light immediately but go wonky or burn weird at the same time so it is important to make certain to get the lighter fueled to the proper level with the wadding holding all the fuel it was meant to.

If a petrol lighter still burns strange though after fueling to a proper level, then replacing the stale old wick and wadding with fresh structurally sound material may be in order. Changing the wick and wadding in most petrol lighters is a pretty simple project and DependableFlame.com has published many instructional videos to help demonstrate these procedures and aid in their completion.

Does It Need A New Flint?

The elementary nature of the principles off which flint sparked lighters operate does not preclude them from being easily misunderstood. I get questions often where it seems obvious to me that the questioner has deduced incorrectly that the tip on the end of the flint spring is the flint itself.

Not all flint springs are equipped with a flint follower or tip which may further confuse the issue for some. Whether there is a tip on the flint spring or not, the lighter will always need a proper flint installed in order for it to spark and ignite as the designer intended.

There also seems to be some question whether all old or new old stock flints maintain their structural integrity over time or can degrade in the package to the point of no longer being useful or even possibly causing damage to the lighter. I don’t know this to be the case but have encountered the argument that the old Ronson Redskin flints oxidize over time into a harder disposition that is unsuitable and damaging to lighter mechanisms.

I have experimented with many old and new flints and found some to be inferior and no longer suitable from their degradation but these were usually obvious as their appearance was evident of the damage. Whether a flint that looks structurally sound can harden to the point of causing damage I couldn’t say for sure but with the variety of flints currently being produced and available to consumers today, no one should feel compelled to use new old stock flints and if you do believe they are damaging to your lighter then it’s easy enough to just use new flints.

Is It Suffering From Vapor Lock?

Many perceived problems with petrol lighters could be dispatched by simply fueling the lighter and letting it set for a day or at least a period of several hours before trying to ignite and use the lighter. A petrol lighter that is over-filled will not typically act right and giving the lighter time for the fuel to settle and the excess vapors to dissipate will most often solve the symptoms of vapor lock that over-filling with fuel may have created.

Vapor lock is caused when the proper mixture of fuel and oxygen at the ignition site gets thrown out of balance and restricts the lighter’s ability to light appropriately. Vapor lock can appear as a variety of symptoms including appearing that the lighter has no fuel to a plume of fire blowing out the top of the chimney like a small explosion.

Vapor lock symptoms will dissipate quickly though with the evaporation of excess fuel vapors, so just let the lighter set or open the snuffer for half an hour or so and it should correct itself. The operator can also flood the ignition area of the lighter with oxygen by running the lighter quickly up into the air, thus forcing excess fuel vapors from the chimney.

Strike Your Flame

Our goal here at DependableFlame.com is to help as many folks as we can get there old petrol lighters back up and running in good functional order through the instructional demonstration lighter repair videos we publish regularly on our YouTube channel. I appreciate and try to answer all questions in regard to these lighter repairs and the comment section of this or any other article on DependableFlame.com are the best place to ask such questions.

We publish a new article or vintage lighter story every Monday, Wednesday and Friday so keep your eyes peeled for the latest and greatest content in the vintage cigarette lighter hobby.

Please consider joining us for the YouTube live stream Vintage Coffee And Lighters Live! every Tuesday @10am central where we gather around with all our friends and discuss old lighters and maybe another topic or two!

Until next time…