Coleman lantern

Good question, wish I had an answer, I have always used Coleman fuel in both my Coleman Stove and lantern. That said a can of Coleman fuel is not that expansive and I can easily get a week or more use out of it for cooking and light when needed.

I don't have an answer either,but seems the Coleman fuel is very stable. I have a single burner heating element that the fuel has been in it over 10 years and it still lights and seems to burn ok.

A can of Coleman fuel at most places is $14.00. Sometimes Walmart has camp fuel for a little over $7.00 dollars. I bought three cans of camp fuel the last time I was there. Walmart doesn't always have the camp fuel, so when a can of Colman fuel gets about half full, and I don't want to spend $14.00, I will fill the can the rest of the way with unleaded and it works great.

Unleaded gas alone is not recommended and the light isn't as good in a lantern. It has to many impurities. After going back to Coleman fuel, it takes a couple of weeks of running on the cleaner fuel to get it where it works as good as it should.

$14 isn't a deal breaker, for a stove or lantern or both, unless you are up all night and cooking it works out to a buck a day, maybe two.

On sale for $10 at times.

Unleaded gas will work - for a while. Not recommended except on the specially designed "dual fuel" coleman devices.

My bet is you could run it on E-10 until the lights came back on, no sweat but if you are storing fuel, get the Coleman.

On 1 Apr 2016 21:28:23 GMT, notbob wrote in

I've been using unleaded gas in mine for 15 years; although I don't use it very often (several hours a year).

Thnx, CRNG. That's prolly all I'll use mine.

Turns out the "white gas" I remember is gasoline without any additives. Hard to find, these days, yet Coleman Fuel is now an outrageous $15 gal! Usta be less than $5 fer a gal can.

A local gas station, hereabouts, advertises non-ethynol gasoline. At < $3 gal, I'll give it a shot. What am I gonna do? Mess up a $5 lantern I didn't need, anyway? ;)

nb

I've always thought that white gas was kerosene. I think gasoline is to volatile and might be dangerous to use in a lantern.

Paul

Actually I think it's Naphtha.

Apparently, it's both.

The "Coleman fuel" link sez it has an octane rating of "50 to 55". Most states set a min limit of 80 octane fer regular gas. Even Walmart only sells the Coleman stuff fer $7.50/32ozs. And here I thought kerosene had become obscenely expensive.

I don't think 25/30 more "octane" points is gonna make much difference to a lantern. The Coleman Fuel wiki link warns against using CF in cars, but does not really raise any flags on using gasoline fer lantern fuel.

Coleman even offers a "duel fuel" (CF, gasoline) lantern for an astonishing $90! Damned if it don't look exactly like my used Coleman lantern. ;)

Well, mine's green, but otherwise. I think Coleman's lanterns will work jes fine on gasoline, but lookit all the $$$$ they'll lose if you do, so they charge up the ying-yang for their "duel fuel" version.

nb

White gas is most definitely NOT Kerosine. It is what is also sold as Naptha Gas. VERY volatile compared to Kero

From your posted link:

"White gas should not be confused with white spirit, which is more akin to kerosene."

What was called white gas about 50 years and sold by AMCO (think that is the company) was a 'high test' gas. It was not red colored like the 'regular' gas they also sold. Most other gas for cars was also red or orange colored.

Seems like gas for cars was called either regular, or high test which sometimes was called something like ethol. Not sure of the exect spelling of that. They had 2 pumps, one for each type.

That was back in the days when most stations sold either regular or high test . I burnt a lot of the AMCO white gas in a 1968 dodge dart with the hrgh performace 340 cu in engines in it. It was tuned up by some dodge mechanics for me and it would only bury the white gas or the Sunco 360. Everything would spark knock.

It was Ethyl

Sunoco 260. They never made a 360.

There are wick type lanterns, which do use kerosene or ultra pure.

The other kind has a generator, and bag style mantles. And, those take Coleman, white gas, and some take unleaded. Some of the older ones, unleaded clogs the generator. So, I've read. I can't explain it any more than that.

The Coleman fuel or camp fuel from Walmart, is definitely NOT high octane. Because the Amoco white gas was touted as high octane, I decided to use some camp fuel in my generator. BAD IDEA!

The generator started OK, but then began jumping around on the ground. Apparently the "octane" in high octane serves to slow down combustion. Low octane fuel tends to explode rather than burn. I have since read about chunks of spark plug ceramic being broken off by the explosions, and scoring cylinders. I was lucky my generator was not damaged.

Fred

If yuo don't like Coleman fuel you can buy naptha at a hardware store. Last time I looked it was about the same price per gallon.