Hi - my first post here, although I've been lurking and reading for a while. Great forum.
Can I defend the venerable Tilley? For more years than I want to admit I was involved with a Scout Group which used Tilleys for camp lighting and we never had any notable problems with them.
I've got two of my own, one very ancient, the other acquired when the Civil Defence was shut down some years ago - it was brand new, never issued, and absolutely perfect. Both still work very well and are totally reliable.
That said, whenever I have had problems with a Tilley, it was almost always traced back to the evaporator tube and fixed by changing the tube. Sometimes, removal of the carbon build-up on the needle shaft would help, but generally we reckoned that if the shaft was carboned, so too was the inside of the tube.
Some of the group's Tilley's worked better than others, and we never managed to find out why that was, even despite switching parts around between them. Pump washers can be troublesome, but nothing a bit of oil doesn't fix although in one case I had to liberate a washer from a Land Rover to sort one and that fix is still there some 15 years later I believe.
I've no experience of the Vapalux, but over on SoTP there's a thread commenting about problems with "pulsing" on both Vapalux and Tilleys which offers some interesting thoughts.
http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=13960&highlight=tilley+lamp Whenever it's happened to a Tilley, I've usually found that operating the valve to ***** the jet would stop it. Making sure the thing isn't overpumped also helps and it's essential to use a paraffin funnel to fill it, as even "clean" fuel often has bits and gunk in it which don't help at all and can sometimes foul the pick up filter.
On the subject of the tubes, we trained the Scouts to understand that the valve had to be fully closed (ie. taken past the point where the light went out) for the pricker to rise up thro the jet.
That in turn led to another discovery, which was that when changing a tube, it's essential to have the valve fully open (no pressure obviously) when removing or replacing a tube. If you dont, the needle will usually break off in the jet as it rises while the tube is being rotated. I regard the tube as one of those things which you have to accept will need to be changed on a fairly frequent basis.
The price of things like pre-heaters and meths jars is extortionate - we did find that a pre-heater stored for any length of time in meths will disintegrate! We also found that there are other alternatives to the genuine meths bottles which can be often found in the form of mustard jars, baby food jars and condiment jars.
Wonderful things. We had some big Camping Gaz lights as well - the Tilleys were far better.
Apologies for such a long "first post", but I hope it's of some use. I'd not heard of the citric acid and wire wool trick, so I'm going to use it myself on a slightly rusty cage on the oldest of my lights. I can affirm that there is no point in painting a top!
Mike.