1) Use only quintuple refined butane. This is as important as using high-octane gasoline in your expensive sports car. Readily available at any B&M and online, QRB is free of impurities that can clog the nozzle of your lighter.
2) Protect your lighter from the elements. Don鈥檛 leave it outside overnight; don鈥檛 leave it in your hot/cold car, and keep it out of direct sunlight.
3) Purging. Sometimes when filling our cigar lighters with butane, we inadvertently introduce air into the fuel tank, causing misfires and flameouts. If this happens, purging (bleeding) the lighter of trapped air is the remedy. There are many techniques to purging and some require emptying the lighter and using probes to depress the fueling valve. But there is a simple refueling technique that actually purges while refueling, resulting in good lighter performance with less lighter maintenance.
4) Let the lighter reach room temperature after refueling. My physics is a little rusty, but all the manufacturers state that a cold lighter doesn鈥檛 perform well and we should let them warm up after refueling (which makes them very cold, again, physics is not my thing). But I have learned that butane has a boiling point of 31 degrees Fahrenheit, which means that a lighter used in the cold weather will not work well at all. Butane will stay liquid below that temperature, so on that blustery day, that shirt pocket inside your coat is a warm and cozy place to keep your lighter.
5) Clean the nozzle. Cigar lighters do a dirty job, in a dirty environment. So it stands to reason that things like lint and ash can contaminate the nozzle of a torch lighter.
