Lava not flowing

I have a lava lamp century model that is at least 10 years old. Lately it seems the lava doesn't flow properly it just sits in the bottom. I have read other posts about people changing the liquid/wax/coil but I have never attempted to perform surgery on a lava lamp. I'm not an expert but the century model seems to be a more rare model so I want to avoid messing with it too much if possible. In the past it has acted like this before occasionally and I would just turn it off when the lava stops flowing and the next day it would work fine. Now it has done this several times in a row. Is there any way to gently coax the lava back to flowing properly?

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Permalink Reply by neo on September 9, 2010 at 4:31pm

It's completely melted and floating just above the coil touching part of it.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Johnson on October 23, 2020 at 6:30pm

This exact same thing happened to me with two lamps. Keeping the heat lower with a dimmer helps but I think that there is too much surfactant sand am currently trying to dilute the fluid in a new model to see if it works. The other lamp is an Aristocrat from the early 90's and I'm not sure I want to mess with it.