Can anyone give me any info about the relative quality of this model? I have been eying one that is on ebay regularly but dont want to spend for a paperweight. is the pump leather? machining fit/finish relatively decent? function decently? any info is appreciated
The Santrax 150 can be a nice little lantern, but with most of the new production there is no 100% guarantee that the one you get will be a good one. Personally I think the Santrax lanterns are a bit better quality than others from SE Asia. It will probably need a fettle straight out of the box, but once set up right should be ok. The 150 lantern can be a bit fussy with fuel though. They need to be good and hot to keep the vapourisation running nicely. This means a good quality kerosene. Also due to the colder running, the vapouriser tends to need cleaning more often than larger lanterns. If the price is right then they're not a bad little lantern to play around with.
as the geniol 150 HK is like the same as the current santrax 150HK (or even the Petromax 150HK), i would recommend to buy one, but do run it with petrol (not forget to change sealings to petrol-resistant ones!), not with kerosene ! with kerosene, it´ll get extreme hot (be careful touching the tank!). my 2 geniol are much more reliable with the use of petrol as fuel.
Not on those I have dealt with. They used the more modern approach with o-rings. And I would strongly advise you to not run it on petrol! It's not built to use that for fuel, and lacks all the safety devices you expect to find on a petrol lantern.
what should those be ? f.e. hasag lanterns haven´t any "savety devices" and can be run on either petrol or kerosene. i consider these 150HK lanterns more safe with petrol as fuel, because they don´t get as hot as with kerosene and can be run with lower pressure.
It doesn't have any positive shut off valve, and the NRV doesn't have any secondary sealing as real petrol lanterns have. It also has a quick starter which has a very poor sealant towards the tank. It's normal for a small lantern to run hot, how odd it might seem, and there are no safety issues with that fact when running on paraffin. The fact that they don't have the proper safety devices is of course not a hinder that they can be used with another fuel than they actually were intended for. That does not automatically mean that they should be used with another fuel. I guess you could run it on acetone if you're inclined...
hasag lanterns have been designed for use with petrol, and they´ve been so over decades. german army did use petromax lanterns with petrol, swiss army as well. one knows, that any lamp should be in perfect working order, nevertheless it´s a petrol, kerosene or gas lamp. my experience is, that petrol is okay. and i count on brain, instead of "safty devices"
No. A lantern that originally was designed to use petrol has the correct arrangements to use this fuel, regardless which country it was made in. The fact that you CAN use a paraffin lantern with petrol doesn't necessarily make it a petrol lantern. Besides, most lanterns actually run best with the fuel they were designed for, even how strange it might sound...
that is, what i and lots of other 150HK users doubt i suggest, that you should try it 8) (only in case your 150 HK doesn´t run properly with kerosene, if it does, don´t change a running system )
The smallest paraffin lanterns are always tricky to get to run correct. It's in their system, I guess. I assume that's the main reason why people tend to start with their experiments with more volatile fuels. Believe me, it's very common here too and I also test different fuels in my lamps/lanterns. But I know what I'm doing, just as I'm sure you do. But it's nothing we like to recommend here since many of our readers are beginners in this field.
Until around 1959 (I think) when, after some incidents involving the petrol as a fuel, it's further use was banned and the lanterns were marked as paraffin/kerosene only...
The German army stopped using gasoline as a fuel in lamps because of a change in the law in Germany and not because there had been any problems. I am not sure exactyly when this was but the use of gasoline burning appliances was banned generally and the Germany army just complied with this change in the law. However we do know of at least two Petromax lanterns that have exploded when being used with gasoline. Actually fairly modern ones and not really explosions because petrol does not explode it just burns rather quickly and free burning gasoline tends to be interesting and exciting. There are several reasons for not using gasoline in most kerosene lanterns. The main two though are that some kero lanterns do not have a positive lock control valve to shut the burner off and second that most have a rubber seated spring loaded pump check valve. Any lamp that relies on a spring loaded rubber check valve is not at all safe with gasoline. We will all have had a check valve fail at some time. I have had plenty for sure. Mostly they have been fettled befoire the lamp was lit but I have had two that some time after lighting just dumped a tank of fuel through the pump tube because the valve failed. They were kero lamps and it makes a big mess with kero all over the place. Point is if that had been gasoline it would not have made a mess it would have flashed into flame and caused a serious fire. So I don't care what anyone has done or what they say, gasoline in a kero lamp is an accident waiting to happen. When you consider the number of people who come to web sites like this for advice it would be very irresponsible of any of us to suggest that using gasoline in any lamp not designed for that fuel is acceptable. I would actually go beyond this. Petromax built lamps in the 1950s and 60s to run on gasoline. They sold these to both German and Swiss armies. I have examples of both here and they are just basic kero designs with gasoline generators. Yes they work on gasoline but safe they ain't. My Swiss army lantern will not turn off. It goes dim because of the restriction caused by the pricker but it will not go out until you dump pressure. To do this you have to let a quantity of gasoline vapour out and there is a very real chance this will ignite. OK it won't fire the fuel in the lamp but could certainly be alarming and possibly set fire to any nearby combustibles. A gasoline lamp has to have a positive lock main control so you can shut the lamp off without releasing pressure. It has to have a positive lock pump check valve so you can't get fuel escaping from the pump tube in use. It does not have a pressure release because provision of this makes people assume dumping pressure is OK when it is not. So look at lamp design and if any lamp meets these criterior then it is probably safe with gasoline. If it does not then it is only safe with kerosene. I don't care who made it or what the intended use or fuel was, these are essential safety features for gasoline in lamps with no exceptions. ::Neil::
As ever, I bow to your superior knowledge in all lamp matters, Neil! I'd heard there had been some incidents where squaddies had been injured as a result of using petrol in Petromax lanterns - Chinese whispers, I suppose... As a tyro stovie at a meet held on a crowded campsite in the Lake District in 2005, I had an NRV let go in an Optimus 111B with a tank full of panel wipe. The resulting 100 metres hurdles in every direction by the formerly-assembled throng had to be seen to believed! To make matters worse, on the same table as the stove there were bottles of fuel, meths and - perish the thought - a bottle of whisky. Luckily, the conflagration wasn't huge and was extinguished (can't remember how) without further incident. Anyway, that brought home to me the crass stupidity of advocating the use of petrol/gasoline/panel wipe/Coleman in what are, essentially, kero-technology devices. To think that one US seller continues to do so even today staggers me. I must see if I can find the YouTube video of the owner of that company demonstrating how to light one of his lanterns. Here. How this man hasn't yet incinerated himself to a cinder amazes me. BTW, did anybody notice what fuel it was and what kind of motor he got it from? Could you link us to your 'Exploding the Petromax Myth' article, Neil. Perhaps it's here already. ...
Yes we did at one time make the assumption that it was failures in service that had caused the German Army to ban the use of gasoline but I have never been able to find any proof of that and I suspect it was a guess made to explain rather than based on fact. The Guild article mentioned is an interesting discussion. I can't link you to that because the Guild site always defaults to the main page. However you can get to see it by going to the "Search Archive" section of the Q&A page and scrolling down to find #1491. You will also find it by entering "Petromax Explosion" in the search window. Interesting to hear of an Optimus stove failing through the pump tube. Makes you wonder just how safe some of those stoves actually are. One thing I should say is that Petromax and Optimus did make a lantern with a needle valve control for use with gasoline. These lamps have two controls so the shut off and pricker are seperated. However these lanterns still rely on the kero type pump check. Primus also made gasoline lanterns but these have a needle valve pump check stop so are in fact a much better design and will be as safe as it gets for gasoline. All of this reinforces my thinking that in a public forum such as this we have a responsibility to the less experienced readers and the advice we give must be with safety in mind. For this reason my advice is simple. Never use gasoline in a lamp made for kero and in any gasoline lamp the safety checks for leaks and integrity of controls are essential. ::Neil::
