Coleman lamp musings

Hello, long time lurker, 1st time poster
Caught the lamp bug a couple of yrs ago & now have one tilley & four colemans. Some camping gaz lamps & a Coleman focus 5 heater too (superb heater btw!) .
All picked up from online auctions or boot sales, so cheap as chips & needing fixed. Varying ages '82-'94.

This forum has been invaluable for information, so to put something back I can pass on some info about Coleman fuel lamps that I've not seen elsewhere & have learned.

Mantles- I've tried quite a few sock mantles, genuine Coleman & generic. Genuine Coleman ones are okay & I haven't been able to find any gold-top or heavy duty ones to try but the best I've found so far are from China and are the large 9cm long ones with the green tops. You think they are far too big but they shrink fine after burning in. They are longer so just tie them above the second ring on the burner tube instead of between the two rings. They are Super bright output and keep the generator nicely hot for an even burn. Quite robust too.

Air/fuel tube- all mine were old &
clogged. After removing the plastic tube Very thin wire stripped from some 26awg wire works well to run up inside the tiny holes and clear any debris.
After trying various tyre Schrader valves (most just melted or seals expanded)
I stumbled across schrader valves for air con systems. These are hydrocarbon resistant & work well. About £3 for qty 50. O ring for top of fuel tube just use a standard one but don't overtighten.

Font- mine were all internally rusty. White spirits and small nuts inside then shaken for 15 mins cleared the rusty flakes. Left with fresh fuel for a week to clear any remaining lacquer deposits. Reinstall valves and leak test in a bucket of water before using.

Font checkvalve- large flat bit into a thin hex bit holder attached to an impact driver, frees off stuck valves. Then a soak in penetrating fluid & clean with toothbrush until tiny ball bearing is free to rattle up & down. Blow out with compressed air.

Pump- Coleman pump kits are expensive, just get pump leathers from fettlebox, they are superb and only £1 each, bargain. If you break or lose the Coleman spring washer just use 6mm star washers instead & just bend the tangs slightly until a good tight fit is achieved.

Generators-- be really careful with the tiny wire but if bent they can be gently straightened again with needle-nosed pliers. Best bet for reliability is a new generator but older clogged ones can be rescued by removing the rod & spring then heating the tube up to cherry red to burn off the internal carbon. Don't bother trying to use a micro drill bit to unblock the tip, it's extremely difficulttto not damage the precision hole, it just enlarges the hole slightly and leads to uneven burn/pulsing.

Globes- apart from the bigger twin mantle lamps, most globes are interchangeable. £20 for a Coleman one but If you don't mind frosted glass there are 11cm globes available online delivered for half that.

Fuel- Coleman fuel. Expensive. I use naphtha instead. Same burn, similar smell. Just make sure it's not chlorinated nor contains additives such as acetone or silicone. Fast panel wipe is good at £16 per 5L but my latest discovery is Holts brake cleaner that works out at £10.75 per 5L if you buy 10L online. Works great & is pure naphtha too, no nasties. Always have plenty of ventilation of course.

Fuel cap washer--Fettlebox are due to release these in viton soon, but in the meantime, cut down plumbing washers (the ones for washing machine hoses or garden hose attachments) seem to work okay. The centre hole is correct but you need to cut the outer circumference to fit the cap.

Pressure required - low pressure to light, then up to the point where the plunger leaves a dimple in your thumb from the pumping force required! Each lamp is slightly different & the amount of pressure for ideal burn varies with fuel level. Some prefer more pumps than others at various fill levels, just experiment. I find it's part of the attraction that each one has its own unique personality. Or am I particularly sad?

Soz for long post. That's about all I can think of for now. Hope it's of use to someone out there

 

Hi and welcome. That speaks of a lot of experience with just a few lamps. You are mostly preaching to the converted but it's neat to see it in one post. I have been playing with lamps for around 50 years now so I very well understand all of that but some of our newer collectors will, I have no doubt, find it useful. What I did learn is the bit about brake cleaner. The quest for cheaper naphtha is a long running saga and this is a most useful find indeed. ::Neil::

 

@Wirdy

Wonderful presentation and welcome to CPL. The information you've given will be very helpful to many. Thank you for sharing.

Great information to have about the Holts Brake Cleaner.
If you wouldn't mind adding a link for the Holts Brake Cleaner you found, because I'm sure there are many who would be interested.

Cheers,

Norman

 

Welcome aboard!

 

Holts cleaner.
This is the stuff, but search on eBay for it & you'll find it cheaper.

HOLTS BRAKE CLEANER 5 LITRE - Motor Parts Direct Ltd.

 

Hello @Wirdy.
Welcome and nice to know about your debut here.
From your intro, I reckon you must be a very handy and practical person on regards to lamps and such.

 

Excellent post and welcome! This sort of info is great because you learn something new each time. Like you I'd found the Chinese Coleman style mantles to be really good but the heads up on the brake fluid is a real winner! I'd managed to find panel wipe at £15 for 5L, but Holts brake cleaner is available from Amazon for £11.99 free postage!

I'm also aware that as time passes, we collectors will need to be more and more resourceful and find clever ways to keep our lanterns (and stoves in my case) alive and working.

You're not alone in finding the 'different personalities' or our lanterns interesting. I have a Coleman 220K that I initially thought was a dud until I found by experimentation that it needs to have a good amount of fuel in it to work at all and requires bonkers amounts of pressure to run smoothly, but like you say, that's half the fun!

For Tilleys I use cheap Chinese Butterfly No. 41 Mantles (around £2:50 for 10 or £3.75 for 20) which I partly turn inside out so I can unpick the stitched end before fitting this un-stitched end to the burner using a paper covered wire bag tie - the things you get when you buy freezer bags from the supermarket for instance.

Here's a tip... if you need a globe and you're not prepared to spend too much money, you can cut down and convert a cafetière Pyrex jug if you have a steady drilling machine and a diamond cutting ring that will fit in the chuck. It's hair-rasing and a bit risky but the pay off is satisfying when it works. If you choose to keep the pouring lip it makes a very convenient place to fill with meths and light. This only works for Bialaddin sized lantern globes (diameter) and possibly Petromax too... you'd need to measure to make sure, but the jugs need cutting down anyway so the height is variable according to your needs.

 

for the comments. A friendly bunch around here, cheers. Yeah, I'm ex-raf engineer so I like to fettle

Liking the mantle tip & the Pyrex jug tip, but I'm not sure if I have the nerve! . I'll pick up any I see at local boot sales & have a try though. Would rotating the jug and heavily scoring with a tile cutting wheel do the trick? Followed by a sharp tap with a mallet? I've seen the guy on YouTube making a globe from a jamjar....he reckons it works fine but Nope, not for me, I'd only use some sort of heat resistant glass that will crack & not shatter. I value my eyes.
Not sure if anyone else does this, but on my kero Coleman I've put a roll of coiled exhaust wrap into the meths bowl/cup to act as a wick. Also I'm such a tight wad that I didn't want to buy a clip-on tilley preheater so I also did the coil of exhaust wrap at the base of the vaporiser then soak it with meths-much like the bialaddin style of preheating. Oh, and an insect guard made from a jam jar lid with drilled holes. Ha ha.

 

Welcome to CPL @Wirdy . A very useful first post

 

The Pyrex jug trick is a bit tricky, but I have a pillar drill (LIDL's finest!) which makes it easier. I rotate the drill bed, fit the cutter in the chuck, then adjust the height of the drill bed so the jug can be rotated against the cutter. It generally take 7 or 8 complete passes before the cut is deep enough, then what usually happens is that a crack propagates round the cut pretty much instantly. The edge can be a little rough so I sand it on some red aluminium oxide abrasive, but if I had access to an oxy-acetylene torch I would rotate the finished glass tube on a turntable and melt the cut edges. I've made 5 I think and only one shattered because I tried to go to deep too quickly. I regularly see old cafetières in charity shops for a couple of quid so I don't mind the odd breakage!

Keep the tips coming, they're extremely useful. (I've already ordered some Holts brake cleaner!)

 

@ColinG

Great find on amazon with the Holts brake cleaner.

Cheers,

Norman

 

Just for info- At the moment Eurocarparts ebay shop has 5L of Holts brake cleaner reduced to £6.02. Part number is HMAI0202A. I've just bagged another 2 tins at that price.
MSDS shows it as 100% hydrotreated light Naptha. CAS 64742-49-0 confirms this also.

 

Checked on eBay but the offer half price has gone!

 

Ah bugger, that was quickly sold out, but Eurocarparts offers seem cyclic so keep checking periodically.

 

This post may be more suited to the stove club but all this talk of naptha has inspired it. I keep a very old petrol primus stove at my place of work and use it for brewing tea pretty well on a daily basis,( yes I know but vacuum flasks are so boring) the tank of the stove has the words petrol,naptha,benzol and benzoline embossed in to it, it has never been fuelled by anything other than petrol and gives a near perfect blue flame and no smoke at all once heated up, the only exceptions being the rare occasions when there has only been 25/1 two stroke available in which case it will spit out tiny particles of burning oil but it still brews the tea.
I have never owned a petrol lamp so accept that petrol stoves and lamps may burn their fuel in a different manner but given the much higher price of any fuel other than petrol what would be the benefits of naptha over petrol?

 

I'd guess that Naptha being a higher fraction than petrol means it lights easier, burns cleaner, less odour and leaves fewer deposits. I've seen scary videos of people boiling petrol to distill 'white gas' (Naptha). Dual-fuel Coleman generators do seem to gum up quicker with petrol.
If you can bag 5L of brake cleaner for £6 then it's as cheap as unleaded

 

@Mollbhan I used a 'petrol' stove for years - a Korean Shinabro 170GR - and I would have said exactly what you did, until it gave up recently because the wick is now is completely gummed up with unleaded additives. I need to take the feed tube off but it's tricky to do and easy to mess up! It was this that made me rethink using petrol because I loved that stove and it never let me down... but now it's bloody useless. Might I suggest you run some carbeureta cleaner through it while it still works. It's a pain in the ass when it actually stops working!

 

@Mollbhan

The additives in modern pump petrol build up in the vapouriser / generator much quicker than the normal carbonisation that occurs from the older petrol,naptha,benzol which didn't have additives at the time. This results in more cleaning of the vapouriser / generator or total failure and replacement. Even the duel fuel devices designed for modern pump petrol,naptha,benzol will last longer without additives.

 

Since it is unlikely any of us will be using vast quantities of fuel in our lamps or stoves the higher price of naptha should not be too significant, I am sure some of the motor factors will sell brake cleaner at a reasonable price.

 

Can we see a photo of your tea making stove? It sounds interesting!

 

I also add a tiny dash of oil to the panel wipe or brake cleaner,...1% maybe. Atf fluid, 3 in 1, motor oil, redex, anything that's to hand really, as I find the pure Naptha is quite dry for the control valves & a tiny amount of oil just seems to make the valves feel smooth again. I think I read that Coleman fuel has a lubricity additive/corrosion inhibitor, so this suffices.

 

Naphtha...

 

60 years ago I would have got the belt for that mistake David.

 

I get the correct spelling 50% of the time . I'll improve.

 

My apologies for showing a stove on the lamp forum but somebody did ask to see it.
A primus 71 stove made from 1930 until the 1970s so must be plenty around, this is a very early one with the flat filler cap, the fuel types engraved on the tank and no safety valve.
Middle photo shows the primus with its modern equivalent the coleman, a good stove but look at the difference in size
Last photo--- just how do you spell naphta?

 

That's foreign for 'naphtha'...

 

Foreign is a great language - I speak it like a native!

 

I haven't found any decent quantities of the lighter/medium naphtha for sale here in Malaysia.
At best, only the tiny bit of Zippo lighter fluid.
I do find some Holts products (carburretor cleaners, etc) for sale off the shelves here but not the brake cleaner. All are in aerosol-cans and certainly nothing comes in 5-litre containers.

 

For Malaysia maybe you'll find some local brand of brake cleaner. Just look for anything that's 100% fast solvent petroleum & it'll probably be naphtha. Wurth Malaysia do brake cleaner in 5L drums but that brand is generally quite expensive in uk, so maybe defeats the object of our exercise to find the cheapest fuel.

 

Wurth's expensive here too. I've not seen much local-branded brake cleaners here as well.
There are others around but none are naphtha-based.
Most are tetrachloroethylene, dichloromethane, methyl or ethyl-ethers, acetone and some other ketone mixtures with alcohols, toluene, etc. Strong, volatile stuffs. (All of them VOC-rich!). None of them suitable for use as fuel here.