My generous and glorious benefactor dropped by yesterday and dropped off half a ute-load of oily pressure fed hardware. These are the lamps, (there are a couple of new Chinese ones too), but there are stoves, enormous sodderin' irons, a smoothing iron, other misc mystery items. I tried in vain to hide it all from the resident dragon, deep in the bowels of the workshop, but I was sprung! though I was forgiven when she clocked the large wonderous railwayman's 4-way hand-held red and green warning lamp. The Austramaxes and Handis on the left I know, in the middle are a couple of Colemen, to the right are Tilleys yes? Now that tall one with the hook, that's an Alladin yes? Model? It's bigger than it looks. (Cheers Ant.)
Right. One Coleman is marked" Kero" and the other was marked, err ... Shellite I think. The main difference is that the Kero one has the little dish for pre-heating. What's the story here? are they 'convertable' between fuels if I make a little pre-heating dish for the Shellite one? Or are they good on Shellite?
@Julian Whittaker They should have model numbers. It looks like you might have 249s and 242s. Although you can do conversions, I always like to keep the Colemans true to type. You always need a spirit pre-heater for the kero ones, but the Coleman gasoline lanterns often don’t have a preheater. The 249 has a generator that’s bigger than the 242. Shellite is the same as Coleman fuel, and is gasoline (petrol) without all the additives. Cheers Tony
'Course you're right Tony, why wouldn't I keep them original and "true to type". But how does the Shellite system go compared with Kero? And I wonder if shellite is easily available, I can't remember seeing it on the hardware store shelves.
Shellite works fine. But you’ll have to get used to the start up process — I’m happy to talk you through it. Some people actually add a spirit dish to these Colemans to reduce the chance of the Coleman flare-up. You can get Shellite at hardware stores in the paint section. I buy it with other lamp folk, in bulk (200 litres). Buying it in 20 litre drums from the hardware store is cheaper than in smaller volumes. Cheers Tony
That is a great delivery, your quest for the light begins. It looks like it will be a long one but the light at the end with that lot running will be very bright.
