My son got a big heavy cast iron burner out of an old gas range made in the late 40s or early 50s. He wants to use it in a griddle build for his outdoor kitchen. He changed the orifice to a propane one and hooked it up to my turkey fryer. He did not get satisfactory flame from it even when adjusting my 0-30 lb regulator. He said he was going to drill the burner holes out to see if that helps. I told him to hold off on that because TexAgs knows stuff. Any thoughts?

Does he have an Air mixing valve? I have done several propane to NG conversions and usually have to tinker with the Air/Fuel ratio.

https://a.co/d/7Nd9gLg

Tx-Ag2010 said:

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Does he have an Air mixing valve? I have done several propane to NG conversions and usually have to tinker with the Air/Fuel ratio.

https://a.co/d/7Nd9gLg

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He does not. He is feeding straight in. Here is part that I cropped out of the pic he sent.

I have had problems sometimes when the valve to the burner is already open and I then open the tank. The regulator will close down for some reason.
Try closing the burner, opening the tank and letting it sit for a minute or two and then open the burner valve slowly and lighting.

TMfrisco said:

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I have had problems sometimes when the valve to the burner is already open and I then open the tank. The regulator will close down for some reason.
Try closing the burner, opening the tank and letting it sit for a minute or two and then open the burner valve slowly and lighting.

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Pretty sure it's not that. He knows how to reset the regulator.

It could be lack of air. It also might be the valve on the manifold that needs to be removed and cleaned. The holes in the valve might be plugged a little. Welding tip cleaners are handy for this. A light coat of fresh valve grease will make it smooth as glass when he turns the valve handle.

They make different orifice kits you can change out to convert LP gas to natural gas. You can get them off Amazon. It's probably the most efficient way to do it. These are just some examples.

I can tell you on an 8-million BTU/hr cotton gin burner, switching from natural gas to propane you would need a smaller orifice. Drilling out holes bigger would be the opposite of that.

Explanation is that propane has a higher Lower Heating Value (LHV) than natural gas...the same volume of propane has more BTUs than the same volume of natural gas.

It has been a while since I worked on old gas stoves, but from what I remember from working on 50's era stoves was that the individual valves often had adjustment screws that would allow for more gas flow. These screws would allow you to set the correct flame height.

The flames on that burner look good, just a little low. I can see some of the holes in the burner haven't ignited.

That's a nice looking burner which work really well with a big griddle above it.

Take the brass ring orifice out of the valve and flip over, put back in. The old burners had one side of orifice propane and other side NG. An old journeyman plumber showed me that trick.

Where is the orofice located on that setup?