Just felt like lighting these two. One has a Coleman 220(?) straight globe and the other has a frosted globe intended for a Coleman 5156. Of course the cats had to come and see what was happening. The frosted globe started itself as is often the case and the plain glass would have started earlier if I'd been paying attention. If I'd opened the valve she'd have started. Excuse the muttering in the background - we were trying to keep the cats away!
Thanks for the great video. I enjoyed watching a fellow collector in action from start to end. I have to say, to me, that is a lot of work to get a lantern going. Match light petrol lamps and lanterns are awesome to light. The AGM Ready Lites with the carburettor valve are sensational. Prior to lighting the pre-heat cup, had you put any air in the founts? @Darryl Durdin has generously posted a Veritas to me. It should arrive next week. I might even consider documenting the fettling of the lamp by video and can perhaps edit it well enough to see go to whoa with whoa being lighting the lantern. 'Go to whoa' may be an Aussie thing - start to finish.
@ColinG @AussiePete Talk me through what the myth states. What and where are things to supposedly go wrong?
Hi there, i had read in a few threads from the past, not a good review, i was given a veritas 350, i did know anything about them, i did strip and clean up all the parts, i was missing a globe, bale, and air tube, i found that aladdin globes fit well, @outback boy generously sent me the bale and airtube, the pricker needle was good but i brock it, another member put me onto a similar needle i could by off eBay, with a slight mod i could make it work, with these instructions Big long sock type mantle, helps with better vaporisation. Long pre heat. Fill the meth bowl to the brim. Lite, wait until it is nearly gone. Pump air into tank, release fuel knob. Mantle starts to work, pump more pressure up. I do not put pressure in the tank until the meth has nearly gone. I treat it like the lanterns with no shut off valve. My vertas is quite bright and fuel efficent. I hope this helps i did document it in the gallery
Did I put any air in the tank first? Not this time but I usually do as Superbs seem to like it that way. I have a 3 Coleman fuel/naptha based Colemans and a couple of AshFlash that run on the same stuff but as most of my lanterns run indoors (at least some of the time), kero is safer in the event of a leak or a failure. If that happened all I'd have to deal with is an annoying smell and a ring of fuel rather than a potential fireball. It's purely my preference and yes I know a million people use naptha based lanterns round the globe and automobiles run on the stuff in every country in the world, but using kero in lanterns makes me happy. Looking at the video I did make a bloody meal of it but I couldn't decide which one to light so I lit both... at the same time... with cats trying to get in on the act! Maybe I'll have another go with less distractions!
@ColinG I saw the video on YouTube before I read this post. I like the look or the Superb with the straight glass too. Keep posting your videos. Regards Jeremy
Yes, using naphtha/petrol/gasoline in lamps, lanterns and cars which are designed to run on the stuff safely is one thing. Using those same fuels in lamps and lanterns based on paraffin/kerosene technology is something else altogether...
*Caveate: No one is to read that I state using petrol in a kerosene designed lamp is safe or should be done. I read @David Shouksmith comments and I agree with them. What I'm trying to work out is why I agree with them, should I agree with them? What exactly are the risks and how much greater are the risks between the two fuels: Kerosene and Petrol. I think the biggest consensus is, there are two main danger areas of using petrol in kerosene designed lamps. 1) Kerosene designed lamps generally have NRV's and if the NRV's fail, kerosene will spurt/spray out of the pump tube. It seems to be that people accept that if an NRV fails and kerosene does spew out, it is somehow safer than petrol spewing out. Is it though? Petrol lamps that use a check valve must have the same degree of risk of their check valve failing as kerosene lamps have of their NRV valve failing? Some companies, such as Coleman and AGM, in some cases have a further safety feature where the pump rod screws into the hole in the check valve rendering it safe even if, unbeknown to you, the check valve has failed. However, that safety feature is disabled when using the pump to pressurise the fount. That is when the user is at greatest risk, pressurising the lamp while it is running. Other check valves most noticeably the air/fuel cap type also have a second line of defence because the air screw valve is tightened after pressurising. However, those types sit on the top of the fuel bung and if they have failed whilst the air screw valve is tightened, when you release the air screw valve to add more pressure, you are in danger of being sprayed with fuel. The danger level is dependent on the amount of pressure that is still in the fount. 2) Positive shut off valves or the lack there of. A lot of kerosene lamps only have a pricker control wheel that cannot completely shut the fuel off in the case of an emergency. In many cases, there is virtually no shut off if the pricker wire is damaged or missing. Petrol lamps generally come with a positive shut off valve and in the case of an emergency, that valve can be closed hence cutting off the flow of fuel. A positive shut off valve is by far and away superior than relying on the pricker to shut the fuel off. David mentions technology between petrol and kerosene lamps. As described above that technology is evident. However, there are companies that used exactly the same technology for both petrol and kerosene lamps. The Australian Handi lamp is a perfect example. The lamp used either a jet (tip) designed for kerosene or a jet designed for petrol. So, a very minute change in jet orifice was the only difference between the lamps. There were no other alterations apart from a tag added at the factory to indicate if a lamp was to be sold as petrol or kerosene. I believe Handi use an NRV and a positive shut off valve with a separate pricker lever. I *think* Coleman's 236 and 237, petrol and kerosene models, only differ in the size of the jet used. What seems to have been lost to or over looked by present day collectors is, nearly all the manufacturers in America considered their lamps multi fuel, both kerosene and petrol. They simply sold you a different jet depending on the fuel you wished to use. I don't mean their more modern lamps, I mean from the get go. Petrol is more volatile than kerosene. That fact cannot be denied. However, my question is, does that really matter? Is there that much of a difference between the volatility of petrol and kerosene? Will they both explode if released through an NRV or check valve whilst the lamp is in operation? Is petrol more likely to explode or is the difference between volatility so small that both are destined to explode under the same circumstances. Neil McRae documented a Tilley FL6 unexpectedly releasing fuel that killed the poor soul using the lamp. (Perhaps a bystander) The point is, someone was killed by the kerosene igniting. I have read hundreds of articles written in reference to lamp users or bystanders being injured or killed by an exploding lamp. What has dawned on me is there are three types of danger that people put themselves in. The dangers people create when using lamps. 1)The first has to do with panic. As we know, if we don't pre-heat a lamp, mostly kerosene lamps but petrol torch light lamps too, the lamps will flare. After reading articles, it is obvious that in some cases the user was trying to light the lamp when it "exploded". They then panicked and picked the lamp up and tried to throw it outside through a door or even window. Often these panicked people, that more often than not were women, missed their target and set fire to the surroundings and often themselves. Many of the sudden "explosions" were no more than flare ups that were badly mishandled causing injury or death. Many women were in grave danger, if a lamp flamed, because of the clothing they wore. Long flowing cotton nighties, both down the body and arms, simply erupted if the women somehow managed to let the flame sniff her clothing. A women's clothing catching fire was a definite reason that more fatalities took place than should have happened. 2) Stupidity: I don't wish to speak ill of the dead or the injured but pure stupidity played a big role in many deaths. I read one article where a prominent lamp manufacturers wife was killed by exploding kerosene. The woman thought it was a good idea to re-fill her kerosene stove fuel tank from a 5 gallon drum of whilst the stove was alight. There are other accounts of stupidity but I think the one described says it all. 3)Laziness: I suppose this could be put in the Stupid category too but this is a special kind of stupidity brought about by not knowing what the consequences of your actions will be. Sometimes, as in the *Coleman case Over pressurising lamps would have been a real killer in waiting. That is most certainly true of hanging lamps and the early ARC lamps that were either hung or placed on a bench/table etc. *One of Coleman's early ARC's "exploded" in a county jail. As was accustomed at the time, Coleman rented out his Arc lamps. In some cases people paid for the extra service for Coleman or someone that Coleman employed to routinely service, fill and light the lamps. One of Coleman's employee's had serviced, filled and lit the ARC. As he was hanging it up, the fount burst open spraying him and two others in the jail cell with burning fuel. All three died. I suspect the jailer complained the light wasn't getting through the night and the cure for the problem was more pressure. The better solution was to add more pressure during the night rather than adding a pressure at the beginning of the night, that the fount couldn't handle. Of course, that would mean Coleman's employee would have had to get out of bed and attend the lamp.... Laziness. Whenever I read an article where the lamp is described as "suddenly exploding" I feel I know if it is a flare up or a failed fount as long as the article is reasonably descriptive. A lamp that is flaring will be picked up so it can be tried to be removed for the house/building. A lamp that was over pressurised and/or the fount failed, it was all over for anyone standing close to the lamp. They aren't described as attempting to remove the lamp. Many of the failed fount accounts had witnesses because employee's of the company that supplied the lamp to the business were the ones attending the lamp and the owner and customers of the business were witness to what happened. One last thing to mention is of course manufacture failures. I do suspect that at least some of the failed fount catastrophes were due to faulty manufacture. A poor solder job was most likely the main reason for founts to fail - if used at the correct pressure. You can bet, whenever a company was taken to court, the plaintiff would allege faulty workmanship and the defendants would accuse the plaintiffs of over pressurising. When you have a situation where Coleman's employee was attending the lamp, I suspect the defendant is in very big legal trouble because the company was not only responsible for the safe manufacture of the lamps but also the pressurising of the lamps. Sorry if I rambled too much. I was sick of sorting parts.
I too have come to a halt with fettling @Matty I've repaired, painted, soldered myself to a standstill and most mornings I can be found in the workshop looking a bit lost and pissed off! As for the fuel discussion... I have an 1800 litre central heating tank full of kero round the side of my house so my decision to use it as lantern fuel is a no brainier! Also, buying naptha is so bl00dy expensive in the UK. CF is just crazy and even if I use alternatives like brake cleaner or panel wipe it's still quite pricey! I keep about 20 litres of brake cleaner for use in the Powerhouse, 220's and the AshFlash's plus my various stoves.
Colin, I may upset a few people here for being blunt. I cannot for the life of me understand why collectors don't use simple, plain unleaded petrol. I get the feeling that most collectors feel unleaded petrol isn't good enough to use in lamps. I mean seriously. The quality of today's fuel is 10 times better than what the fuel was like when many of the early lamps were around. I have run a Coleman 236, put 3 tanks through it and haven't had to use the pricker. I can understand collectors having a preference. I understand that, they are able to choose their own poison - just because it is OK for them to do so. I can understand that spending 3 times what petrol costs is doable by those that can afford it. I get all that. I think what I can't understand is, why so many think it is a bad idea to run petrol in their lamps. Your generators are going to block quicker? Very, very doubtful. The above is based on fuel available in Australia. We don't need the winter additives that American and European petrol's have put in them to battle freezing. I'm not even sure those additives do much harm to a generator. I remember a fellow on the Coleman forum ran the same lamps for the same amount of time and documented his findings. He did a really in depth study. He didn't just run two lamps for a couple of hours, he ran them for tank after tank after tank. I do recall him coming to the conclusion that he may have had to prick the petrol lamp once or twice more than the Coleman fuel lamp. I also remember him saying, that if the results had of shown that he would need to replace a generator a little earlier in the pterol lamp compared to the Coleman fuel driven lamp - who cares? The savings in fuel costs far, far outweighed the cost of a generator.
The point about safety features in gasoline lamps is if the fuel escapes then it is much more likely to ignite than kero and that makes it rather more important to have positive lock pump valves and fuel shut off valves. The FL6 explosion was a rather unusual one in that a kero leak ingnited because in an FL6 the metal and space around the valve heats up because it is shielded. The leaking burning kero did not explode, it gently heated the tank until the kero boiled and the pressure destroyed the tank and the atomised kero then went bang. I have had leaks from valves and pump NRVs in Tilley and Optimus lamps. Twice that has discharged a tank full of kero and made a serious mess and the lamp went out. The same fault with a gasoline leak might have heated the fuel inside the tank and caused a pressure failure but in any case a pint of burning fuel can cause a lot of collateral damage without an explosion. Henry and I ran a Primus 1060 for several nights with unleaded petrol on one of our trips into Germany some years ago and after about ten hours burning we found we were operating the pricker about every five minutes. Got kinda tedious so I cleaned out the generator and we got away with another tank full burn before we were twiddling the damn pricker again. The Coleman 236 generator certainly doesn't like unleaded. In the UK it would be cheaper to replace the generator every ten hours than run with CF. ::Neil::
To each his own, I guess. If the lantern was designed to run on gasoline I use gasoline, if it was designed to run on kerosene I use kerosene. Plain and simple. Unleaded gasoline is about all we can get over here; I know nothing about aviation gasoline. Maybe I'm wrong but "white" gasoline years ago and mentioned in older Coleman literature, was unleaded gasoline. Over here AMACO was a leader in unleaded gasoline. My late father-in-law was a mechanic by trade and had his own service station. He sold AMACO products and that was from the late 1930's until about 1952, when he gave up the ghost. If I'm wrong it won't be the first or last time... My 2 cents worth...
@george The old “unleaded gasoline” was “white gas” as far as I’ve been able to find out. That means it is pretty close to or the same as “Coleman fuel”. I can’t comment on US pump gasoline as I know very little about it, but modern unleaded gasoline sold in Australia (we call it “petrol”, or ULP) has modern additives to replace the lead that was in leaded petrol, and other additives. Jet-A, the fuel used in turbo jet aircraft is straight kerosene. It is used in North America extensively in the airline industry. In Australia, Jet-A1 is available. It is Jet-A with some antifreeze. I use Jet-A1 in my kerosene lamps. Cheers Tony
This conversation about unleaded petrol versus naphtha fuel is very interesting. There appears to be empirical evidence to suggest that some of the thoughts we have cultivated over the years about unleaded fuel needs to be tested. Just like the late debunking of the Veritas myth of poor performance, perhaps the use of unleaded petrol needs to be further tested and published on this forum. This is why this forum is so good for our hobby, diverse peoples over the world constantly testing the established methods and beliefs to get to the truth and ultimately running our lanterns more efficiently and safely. Cheers Pete
Old unleaded fuel was naphtha or very close to it as far as I know, and happy to be corrected, but they didn’t publish MSDS sheets in those days. Lead was added old gasoline to stop engine ‘knocking’. In Australia one could buy both leaded and ‘pure’ gasoline. Lead was removed from petrol (gasoline) to stop people being poisoned and the lead was replaced by other additives and called Unleaded Petrol (ULP), which is not the same as the old ‘pure’ gasoline. Discussion about using modern “pump” kerosene is really about its additives clogging generators (or not). Cheers Tony @AussiePete
@AussiePete Pete, right you are! My father use to run a tank full of "white" gasoline every third or forth fill up. He said, "it cleaned the engine". Had to be careful and not run it all the time. Valves and especially valve stems needed the lead for lubrication. The leaded gasoline was the only way to get it. Now, the valves and stems use different materials and don't need the lead.
@george I liked what you said about your father running the vehicle on “white gas” every few tanks. A bit like Amish adding white gas to kerosene. There is some very interesting information here: Gasoline - Wikipedia Cheers Tony
And those additives clog generators ! It is my understanding that the main reason Coleman Dual Fuel generators are larger in diameter than their Coleman Fuel only counterparts, is to allow more room for the crud which will eventually clog the generator, to build up. In the not too distant past, when Coleman generators could be taken apart, it was easy to see which ones had been run exclusively on Coleman fuel and which ones had had unleaded through them. Coleman fuel only, left the inside of the tube clean enough for the dull grey, clean and dry to the touch cardboard (?) 'cigar' to fall out of its own accord, the needle rod and wire coil were also clean. Used with unleaded, the cardboard cigar would be covered in a sticky black gunge which often glued the other internals in place. You bet they are ! Henry.
I believe I have heard that some of the additives do not burn fully and give some by-products that are not good for your health. So if you do run ULP, don't use it indoors.
Well, it must be a factor depending on what part of the world you live in and what treatment the fuel gets in your area. I did allude to that in my previous post. JimL, I think it was at CCF, whom did very controlled tests for a long period of time didn't find the clogging of generators to be a significant factor. I think there is truth that ULP will block a generator quicker than Coleman fuel. As Neil said and Jims tests concluded, it is far cheaper to buy an extra generator than than use Coleman Fuel over ULP. Most of the older generators are serviceable so I don't see much of an issue using them. I do wonder how many lamps in a collection get run to the point their generators will be worn out? Perhaps that is correct. I did look at the current NorthStar user manual and I couldn't find such a specific warning. They advise you not to use the lamps indoors.
If everything was equal, I don't think there would be a need to discuss Coleman Fuel V's Unleaded. I think it is probably proven that over a long period of time, Coleman Fuel/Shellite is better for your generators than unleaded. The argument for Coleman fuel is, you won't go through generators as often. It is cheaper to use Coleman fuel in the long run - I think that is the point Coleman Fuel/Shellite users make. Things aren't equal though. I just did three searches. One for each product. I didn't try and find the cheapest nor the most expensive, just whatever came up first, I used. From what I searched, in rough round figures, in today's market you can buy 3 times the amount of unleaded as you can Coleman Fuel plus a new generator. Even before the oil crash you could buy twice as much unleaded as Coleman Fuel plus a new generator. I have put 10 litres of unleaded through a 236 I have here and there is nothing wrong with the generator. If I had of used Coleman Fuel it would have cost me in round figures $100. For $100 I could use the same amount of unleaded as Coleman fuel and buy 4 generators. Using Coleman fuel I have 3 empty tins. Using unleaded, I have 4 unused generators. If I went again, I'd probably have to change a generator but at the end of $200, I'd have 6 empty Coleman Fuel tins or if I used unleaded I'd have 7 unused generators.
With regards to unleaded, there's a difference betwee US and UK unleaded apparently. My own experience is with a Korean Shinabro stove. I ran it for 35 years on UK unleaded and it worked just fine... until it didn't! The UK unleaded has additives and they completely blocked the fuel line and the wick. I haven't got the skills to get in to fix the problem so it now sits on my shelf as it's useless! So... 35 years is pretty good going but it only got used 2 or 3 times a year... is that good or not? I'm not sure, but the experience has put me off using UK unleaded in any of my appliances! Oh, I have a British Army No. 7 stove in the same state but I didn't do that, the ex SAS guy I bought it from was responsible! One day I'll bite the bullet and fix them both.... well, maybe. Why UK and US unleaded are different is beyond me!
Another safety factor to consider is the Flash Point of the various fuels used. Any fuel with a flash point < 37.8 C is Flammable, > 37.8 C is combustible. Coleman Fuel F.P. -4 C Petrol -43 C Diesel > 52 C Jet A/A1 > 52 C Kerosene ranges from > 38 C to >72 C an extreme is Canola Oil 327 C. Therefore a leak of petrol in confined spaces is far more dangerous than Kero. (If there is an ignition source) Source Wikipedia
