What if I cant get the cat cover plate off a 1992 Defiant Encore 0028?

[SonOfEru]

I have a 1988 Defiant Encore, and it has finally begun to have problems. A good friend has a 1992 Encore 0028 which he stopped burning after about 5 years when he installed a boiler. So he is letting me take his stove, not used for 20 years now.

He doesnt remember ever replacing the catalytic, so it's probably not in the best shape. Of course the screws holding the cover plate, well, they are solidly rusted in place.

Having fought with rusted screws before, I settled in for a long campaign. I use PB Blaster which I think is better than WD-40. I gave all 4 screws a shot and waited a couple of days. They didnt move a bit with a screwdriver, so I ever so gently got the vise-grips on them and got them to move just a tiny bit. Then I gave them another small shot of PB and waited a day, and torqued them again just a tiny bit, maybe 15 to 20 degrees. I've been at it now for several days. Each time I can see the PB sucking in around the screw head so it's getting in there slowly. A couple of times I gave them some heat with a propane torch, figuring the heat couldnt hurt the castings. Not on the screw, just on the stove itself behind the plate.

Well today one of the lower ones seemed to move a bit better but then it twisted off, RATS! I dont want to go any further. The plate is still held by 3 screws and surely is still solidly in place. I dont want to get into drilling out and re-tapping screw holes. I've done that with steel, never with cast iron.

So given that the cat is likely not in good shape, all I can think of is to burn it as is and live with it.

But I also need to describe how I burn in my current stove. We used it at the old house to heat the whole place. We brought it with us to the new house 20 years ago and only use it to heat the living room area, so I only burn one or two sticks at a time. I'm retired and at home most of the day, and we have central heat to take over if the fire goes out. And since the fire is low, and I got tired of replacing the cat anyway, the last time it gave out I just removed it. I burn with the draft open and it burns very clean. I do close the damper so it keeps the fire slow, and gets more heat out of it before it goes out the flue. I have 2 years of wood in the cellar, so when I burn it, it's absolutely bone dry, all northern hardwoods. I clean my own chimney and it has never been anything but gray powder, nothing builds up at all.

So I plan to keep burning like that, and if I could get the plate off and the cat was a goner I would probably just remove it like I did on the old stove. But I expect I am stuck with whatever the cat is in there.

I have heard of cats disintegrating, so to speak. When I had to replace mine they were cracked and shaky for sure.

My question is - if as seems likely I wont be able to get in there, can a cat disintegrate so badly that it plugs up and blocks the flow and causes the burn to get problematic?

Or does anyone have experience drilling and tapping screw holes on a Defiant? How does that go?

Sorry this is a lengthy one. Thanks for any thoughts

 

[defiant3]

Not a big deal to drill and tap those screws out. Or try Graham theStoveman. He does service in your area.

 

[SonOfEru]

Having cruised some other forums i am thinking that what I really need to ask about is getting screws out. Lots of the forum posts I have read have comments indicating that it's not out of normal for folks to take things apart in a Defiant. Like someone will say "I had to replace the fireback" or "you may need to replace the gasket in the such-ad-such" and things like that.

So you must occasionally run into screws and bolts that are rusted and stuck. Other than PB or WD-40, and maybe heat, how do you go at it? And how often do you have to get a broken screw out?

Another friend of mine, a welder, said I could weld a nut onto the stub of a broken screw and use that to work the screw out. He said to strike the arc inside the nut and fill the nut hole with weld. The heat of the welding would also help loosen up the rust in the threads, he said. I am a fair welder but have never tried that trick.

Thoughts, advice?

 

[SonOfEru]

And I gotta ask,just pure curiosity - is a 0028 the same as a 2140?

 

[DAKSY]

Having cruised some other forums i am thinking that what I really need to ask about is getting screws out. Lots of the forum posts I have read have comments indicating that it's not out of normal for folks to take things apart in a Defiant. Like someone will say "I had to replace the fireback" or "you may need to replace the gasket in the such-ad-such" and things like that.

So you must occasionally run into screws and bolts that are rusted and stuck. Other than PB or WD-40, and maybe heat, how do you go at it? And how often do you have to get a broken screw out?

Another friend of mine, a welder, said I could weld a nut onto the stub of a broken screw and use that to work the screw out. He said to strike the arc inside the nut and fill the nut hole with weld. The heat of the welding would also help loosen up the rust in the threads, he said. I am a fair welder but have never tried that trick.

Thoughts, advice?

Having cruised some other forums i am thinking that what I really need to ask about is getting screws out. Lots of the forum posts I have read have comments indicating that it's not out of normal for folks to take things apart in a Defiant. Like someone will say "I had to replace the fireback" or "you may need to replace the gasket in the such-ad-such" and things like that.

So you must occasionally run into screws and bolts that are rusted and stuck. Other than PB or WD-40, and maybe heat, how do you go at it? And how often do you have to get a broken screw out?

Another friend of mine, a welder, said I could weld a nut onto the stub of a broken screw and use that to work the screw out. He said to strike the arc inside the nut and fill the nut hole with weld. The heat of the welding would also help loosen up the rust in the threads, he said. I am a fair welder but have never tried that trick.

Thoughts, advice?

I always had good luck with an impact driver. The type you hit with a ball peen hammer, after the PBlaster soak...
Most of the fasteners are 1/4-20UN threads.
A #7 (.201") is the tap drill size. You DO NOT want to drill any larger than that.
File the end of the screw as flat as you can - IF you can, then
centerpunch the end of the screw to get a decent drill starting location.
Start small - like a 3/32" drill. Use your PBlaster as a coolant while you drill.
Work your way up, maybe 1/32" in size til you can get the #7 drill in there, then
use your starter & bottoming taps.

 

[SonOfEru]

I always had good luck with an impact driver. The type you hit with a ball peen hammer, after the PBlaster soak...
Most of the fasteners are 1/4-20UN threads.
A #7 (.201") is the tap drill size. You DO NOT want to drill any larger than that.
File the end of the screw as flat as you can - IF you can, then
centerpunch the end of the screw to get a decent drill starting location.
Start small - like a 3/32' drill. Use you PBlaster as a coolant while you drill.
Work your way up, maybe 1/32" in size til you can get the #7 drill in there, then
use your starter & bottoming taps.

Didnt think of an impact driver. And thanks for the tips on drill/tap.

 

[SonOfEru]

And can I repeat the first question - if I dont take the plate off could the cat disintegrate [or be already disintegrated] to the extent that it would block the flow?

A simple way to say it I guess would be - what would happen if a stove owner never bothered to replace the cat? Years down the line, it would stop working in terms of combustion of any gases but would it make the stove not be able to draw well?

I've consoled myself about removing the cat on my own stove, on the basis of seeing my chimney creosote free. I honestly believe the way I run my small fires burns up pretty much all there is to burn, INSIDE the firebox, very little goes up the chimney that is still combustible, so there wouldn't be much for the cat to burn anyway. The wood is wonderfully dry, and the flame is bright, one stick at a time dropped on the coals, when they are still bright and dancing with that faint halo of flame, not down to smoldering. Even at 15 below this past week it had no trouble keeping that section of the house warm. If I loaded it up like I used to in the old house it would drive us out.

 

[SonOfEru]

Didnt think of an impact driver. And thanks for the tips on drill/tap.

So you have done an impact driver on an Encore? I was just thinking about the impact - it would not be dangerous for the casting being brittle?

 

[defiant3]

OK so impact drivers are great, but the back casting on an 0028/2140 is really not heavy enough to support that kind of stress. If you were to damage the back you are screwed (pardon the pun)

Just center punch the bolts as perfectly on center as you can . This really helps. If they're phillips heads you won't need to of course. Drill 5/32, then chase it with 7/32 and tap 1/4-20. It works, and really doesn't take long with good bits on that grade 5 hardware.

 

[SonOfEru]

OK, thanks. I think I can do the screws with the suggestions here

Can I go back to the other end of the question, though?

What would happen if, given my burning of one or two logs at a time, I just leave the old cat there, and for good? Would it ever collapse in a way that would plug the passage?

 

[peakbagger]

Its unlikely the cat will crumble into dust (but it could), there is another post on the forums of a plugged up catalyst. It far more likely that it will plug permanently. I dont your stove particulars but unless there is bypass around the catalyst the stove will have draft issues.

 

[defiant3]

Yeah, eventually it would become a problem. The better question I suppose is: why NOT replace the catalytic combustor? Once you have access to it it ain't no big deal! I see them for sale on line for less than full retail, and unless you'll be burning 24/7 for 5 months straight every season it should last for many many years.

 

[SonOfEru]

Yeah, eventually it would become a problem. The better question I suppose is: why NOT replace the catalytic combustor? Once you have access to it it ain't no big deal! I see them for sale on line for less than full retail, and unless you'll be burning 24/7 for 5 months straight every season it should last for many many years.

Well, the thing is, as I described at first here, the current stove I want to replace used to heat our whole house, an old drafty house, and now it has about half the space to heat and well insulated, modern brand new house. So the first thing would be that I would only want small fires anyway, and I wonder if I could even get the cat to kick in. And as I mentioned, I really believe my small fires burn very clean, I see NO creosote for years now, meaning there wouldnt be much unburned gases to catalyze anyway. I did have creosote in the old house when I burned with the cat and loaded the stove normally.

And yes I do burn 24/7 for 5 to 6 months. I am getting old now, and I drink a lot of coffee so I regularly get up several times at night to go pee, and I feed the fire when I do. And my wife has periods of insomnia so she often has to get up in the middle of the night and find something to do until she feels sleepy again. So I dont want the house to go cold until I can start a new fire in the morning. We have a central heat system of course, but it's that in-floor heat which takes a LONG time, about 4 hours, to come up from cold to where the floor is heating the space. So it's quirky but I have figured it out to my own satisfaction, and have been doing it for years now.

The only reason I am looking to that new stove is that the old one has been slowly, slowly warping over the years, and the damper plate doesnt seal tight any more. I could live with that but this winter it got to the point where the damper plate has begun to spontaneously fall open and if that happens in the middle of the night I do lose the control I want, of damping it down to get it to go a bit slower and last longer.

If I were buying a new stove I would get something smaller and non-catalytic but this deal from my friend is a good one, in my view. I just have this question of leaving the cat there or opening it up and removing it.

 

[SonOfEru]

And peakbagger, where is that post about a plugged up catalyst? I searched but didnt find one that looked specific to my case