My Collection Primus Stove, Coleman Lamp and Miners Lamp

Distilling petrol is no more dangerous than using the stuff in lamps if you observe the basic safety precautions.

 

Bloody hell... I didn't realise it involved distillation, I never got that far in my research! So, panel wipe seems to be the way to go.

 

It is certainly easier to use Panel Wipe but, over here at least, it costs about twice as much as the distilled petrol (excluding the cost of the distillation equipment). I have a fair number of white gasoline stoves, lamps and lanterns that I would like to use regularly and this is the most affordable way I have found to do it. If your Panel Wipe is the same stuff as our Pre-clean, you may need to add 20% paraffin to it to get the "strength" right.

 

Everyone's advice is extremely welcome. I will locate some panel wipe first and take it from there. So assuming PW is the same over her as it is in the US, it must be way more volatile than Coleman Fuel, regular gas or white gas.

 

I wouldn't have thought so because they're all, effectively, naphtha so the volatility will be more-or-less the same for each i.e. more volatile than paraffin/kerosene/call-it-what-you-will...

 

ColinG, By very strange co-incidence I havejust bought a 111. I am not sure if it is a Petrol or Parrafin one

Do you use coleman white spirit in yours ?

When I get mine do you mind if I send you a set of pictures so you tell me if it is the same as yours.

 

@JungleJon , If it is the original Optimus 111 with the original jet it will be kerosene/paraffin. If it is a later variant it may have the larger jet orifice for gasoline as some were shipped with both jets. I would first try it with kerosene and see if it burns with a clean blue flame. If the flame is very yellow it is probably jetted for white gasoline.

 

Hi John, feel free to send me photos in a PM or reply to this post and add them here.

I have two 111s: one runs on paraffin while the other is a 111b designed for white gas or unleaded petrol but not paraffin (the b in 111b stands for benzine - the German for petrol/gasoline).

Until now I have been using British unleaded petrol in my 111b but this will change soon. Unleaded contains additives that can block the jets and stop the stove functioning properly although you can get away with it for a while I have one small stove that has been running on unleaded petrol for 40 years and it still works just fine. I use the term British unleaded petrol as there are differences in the additives that they use in the US and I believe US unleaded is slightly worse in terms of blocking jets and filters - maybe someone else can confirm this? Anyway, I will be switching to Panel Wipe as my fuel very soon once I find a low cost source.

There are ways of telling which model you have, for instance, the paraffin model has 4 vaporising tubes, whereas the petrol/white gas only has two but this isn't fool-proof as there is another model that was designed to be multi-fuel called the 111T (the T stands for triple fuel I believe) and that had four tubes. Anyway, if there is still a sticker on the case it should say which model it is or the case might be embossed with the model number - if you send photos I might be able to tell.

If all else fails, then as Phaedrus42 said, try paraffin first and then unleaded/white gas, but be careful when you use it as you can get nasty flare outs with white gas/petrol!

You use the word Coleman white spirit but you need to be careful with fuel terminology. Coleman white gas is basically automotive fuel but without any additives, not to be confused with white spirit as sold in the UK which is a variant of paraffin (well, very similar) and not the same thing at all. White spirit can even be used in place of paraffin but it's not cheap so there's little benefit in doing it. However you wouldn't want to use white spirit in a 111b. It might work for a little while but it would slowly get weaker and stop but not before a potential flare up.

BTW, I'm no expert in these matters so if you pop on over to Classic Camp Stoves - the sister site to this one, (Classic Camp Stoves) there will be someone who knows way more than me. Also, the site has a ton of photos of all the different Optimus 111 models so you should be able to find your model just by looking.

Good luck
Colin