Space heater?

[sandhills]

Another stupid question from me, while moving my brother inlaw back here from Iowa we were cleaning out his garage and he had a what looked like a new "Pro Temp" space heater in there.  He said leave it, it doesn't work anyway, after he left I told my father in law I'm throwing it in the truck anyway which I did and took it home.  Now as not to highjack Kbeitz's thread I hate fixing something but not knowing what I fixed so I'd like to know what the "photocell" does because I believe that's all it took but very little dust came off the lens of it so I'm not sure.  I cleaned the fuel filter which was clean to start with, cleaned the nozzle which also was clean to begin with, and wiped off the photocell, it seems to work fine now but I didn't see anything wrong with any of those components.  Before I messed with it, it would just ignite than go right back out a few times until it shut down automatically.  It's a multi fuel heater kerosene/diesel, just don't know what that photocell does?

[Kbeitz]

The photocell needs to see the light of the fire of it will shut it's self down...
This keeps the unit from feeding more fuel if it's not burning.

[sandhills]

Thanks Kbeitz, I wonder if it just wasn't pointed right through the hole, I did bend the bracket a bit to line it up when I put it back in.

[Kbeitz]

Yep... It's gotta be just right and clean...

[Randy88]

I'm not sure how old the unit is, but most can be cleaned and set back in, some of the models you can bypass them completely and make the heater run in order to trouble shoot an issue.   My heaters are never left unattended so those eye's are removed and never used.     

If you have fuel and spark at the plug, and the pump is atomizing the fuel, it will run.   You also have to make sure the spark plug is set in the fuel stream, and air filter is clean.     You can also adjust the fuel air pressure to get more btu's out of the heater.     

Depending on how long it has set without being run, you might have to put new vanes in the pump, sometimes they set up and the vanes won't spin out in order to build pressure.