MSR Dragonfly Shut-Down Trick
Published at 19:49 on 26 August 2025
I believe I read this long ago, before I purchased a Dragonfly. Then I forgot about it.
Anyhow, one of the annoyances with the Dragonfly is, no matter how much you let it burn down, it always seems to dribble a little fuel when you take it apart.
Then I realized that in the instructions for their similarly-designed liquid fuel stoves, Optimus tells you that when shutting the stove down, the first thing you should do is flip the bottle over. Then you wait for the flame to die (which takes about a minute but which happens real suddenly when it does). Then wait for the hissing to cease. Then, and only then, turn off the valves and disassemble. (Optimus even labels the fuel connectors for their bottles with “on” and “off” to indicate which orientation does what.)
What flipping the bottle over does is cause the dip tube that is normally on the bottom edge of the fuel bottle to be on its top edge instead. Instead of admitting fuel, it now admits pressurized air. This air then purges the fuel line.
And, despite the MSR instructions being silent about this trick, it works. Of course it does. MSR’s stoves have the same basic design.
No more dribbles!