Hi everyone. I'm Ben from South Africa. I have been interested in lamps probably forever. After reading a lot on this forum, I decided to try fixing a coleman lamp that has been in the family for many years. The lamp was in really bad shape and after looking around for parts i realized that there's not much available in my country. Most everything i did was read on here. So here are some before and after pics. Apologies in advance for poor quality cell pix The fount was riddled and the recomendation around here is to discard it. But like i said. Not much spare around here. So i patched it up. Tried some lead wipe but my equipment doesnt get hot enough. Then i came accros some epoxy that might work like the POR mentioned all over (yup, not available here) Anyhow heres the after pick Ok so now i had the picture crash course aswell Thanx for looking Ben
Oh, I might add that i did the conversion from unleaded petrol to paraffin. Did have a spare generator for that Cheers Ben
Nicely done, Ben! Did you use the ZAR epoxy from gumtree? And good job on the paraffin conversion; cheaper and safer to run than petrol. The car paint dealers sell a solvent called Preclean which burns very well as a replacement for Coleman Fuel and costs about R180 for 5 liters. It is clean and leaves no carbon residue and does not smell. I use it in a 246B, 335 and a 295. If you ever need parts, drop me a line; I may be able to help out.
I'd not sure about the resistance of epoxy to fuel in the long term... So the coversion to paraffin is definitly the right move. I'd be very concerned about it's safety with more volatile fuels.
Thanks for the kind words guys. I really enjoyed this trail fettle and now look forward to an actual restoration. The lamp used to belong to my brother and we used it on every camping/fishing trip back in the day - we knew nothing about pressure lamps and ran it on paraffin to get it going, he used to take the vent off and dribble some spirits over the works and set it alight. Repeating the process until eventually it lit up. Years later I bought a butterfly lamp and noticed the spirit cup. That still didn't help much as I could never get the lamp to work. Several years later I stumbled upon Doron Papo's website and got hold of a Petromax restoration guide. Understanding the operating priciples of these wonderful devices was the first step. And now the bug is in my blood. CPL is like a mine of info and fettling is addictive. @Phil: I checked out the ZAR product. Very costly and shipping it from the cape to witbank will double the cost. I used Corpro 500 a product from local paint factory. I have the tin can in which I mixed it with some paraffin in to monitor long term effects. Thanx a lot for the offer of help with bits and pieces - I'm sure we'll talk soon. I have a Coleman 241G 1964 on it's way to me I mixed up 100ml of epoxy and treated 3 founts to a first coat. Cheers Ben
