Tourist in MSN

White gas jet is bigger, so that would be a richer flame if using kerosene fuel and a white gas jet. So, maybe whomever said that the white gas jet was bluer had things backwards.

I do not recall the situation on the photo, but I have only had yellow flames like that from kerosene. This is my Omnifuel stove. This was clearly too rich. But that was over five years ago so exactly what happened here I do not remember. That probably was before I started mixing some white gas into my kerosene.



As far as elevation, I think you were thinking jetting in a carburetor, not on a stove.

On a carburetor, the fuel comes out of the jet as a liquid. Stove, the fuel comes out as a gas (vapor phase). So, with a stove you are mixing fuel (a gas) with air (a gas), elevation should not change the ratio.

My Optimus 111T in the photo below, nice blue flame, I think this was on coleman fuel. The stove is rated to burn either that or kerosene with the same jet, but the kerosene flame is more yellow. I have used kerosene in this stove too.




Photo below, my Optimus 111B, photo from this past Oct on my canoe trip. This is the first camp stove I ever bought. It is only rated for coleman fuel (or white gas) which is all I ever used in it.

One cold morning in northern Minnesota in the late 1970s, this was the only stove we had in our group that would work, it was minus 36 degrees (F) that morning according to our thermometer. It took a while to get it lit, a puddle of white gas in the priming cup was too cold to ignite, had to use paper matches like a wick to get the priming cup gas warm enough to burn. But once lit, it was our only functioning stove out of three stoves on that trip. I re-sprayed it a couple years ago, now looks as good as new.



This is quite off topic from the thread which is on bikepacking stoves, the 111T and 111B are a bit heavy and big for bikepacking. Sorry.

tcs

My bike-boom era published-in-1972 Second Bicycle Two Wheel Travel Camping and Touring book recommends (remember, this is in 1972!) the 111B for group tours of four to six riders. For groups of two to three, they suggest the similar but much smaller and lighter Optimus 8R. For one or two, they recommend the Svea 123 with provisos on its sometimes cantankerous start-up: "This is the stove that drives men to butane."

Butane in 1972 was represented by the Bluet S-200 piercing cartridge stove.

Like most young men involved in the bike boom lifestyle, the editorial staff of Second Bicycle Two Wheel Travel Camping and Touring were enamored with all things European. They don't even recognize the existence of the American Coleman company. In 1972 you could still pick up inexpensive M1950 Coleman stoves at Army-Navy surplus stores.

cyccommute 

The differences are more a matter of degree than being entirely different. Lighter fluid is a mixture (C6 to C9 and C4 to C11) that has a boiling range of 3°C to 194°C. The second part of the mixture has a slightly higher boiling range of 20°C to 190°C. Coleman fuel (C6 to C9) has a 3°C to 194°C boiling range. (All boiling ranges are approximate.) The Coleman fuel has a bit more benzene in it which changes the flammability some.

“Mineral spirits” is a somewhat broad range of materials. Odorless…which is the most commonly available now…is a C9 to C16 mix of hydrocarbons with a boiling range of 150°C to 290°C. Kerosene (C9 to C16) has a slightly higher boiling range of 180°C to 300°C. Naphtha, which “odored” or low flash mineral spirits and is a C7 to C12 hydrocarbon mixture, has a slightly lower boiling range than odorless mineral spirits of 90° to 230°C.

This only scratches the surface of a rather complicated range of products. You can see that there is a lot of overlap in terms of boiling ranges (a key to volatility) and carbon chain length. Mineral spirits is just a suggestion as it is widely available in smaller quantities than Coleman fuel and large quantities than cigarette lighter fluid. Again, it would be best to test any of these at home before leaving. A jet change may not be necessary for some and not for others.

MSR suggests that gasoline should be a last resort fuel. I agree and wouldn’t use gasoline for most anything outside of a car engine.

Zippo lighter fluid is probably just a bit less volatile (being able to be converted to a gas) than Coleman fuel or white gas (which is not car gasoline and would make a car run very, very poorly). Charcoal lighter fluid is probably slightly less volatile than naphtha (aka type one mineral spirits or “odored” mineral spirits). Mineral spirits is slightly less volatile than naphtha and kerosene is less volatile still. In terms of decreasing volatility I’d rank the fuels as

Gasoline>>>>>>Coleman fuel (white gas)>Zippo>charcoal lighter fluid≥naphtha>mineral spirits>kerosene.

Gasoline isn’t a bad fuel but it is just too volatile to be used safely.

I’m not a liquid fuel user so I can’t really say if a jet change would be needed or not for different fuels. From what I’ve read, it’s not that kerosene needs a different jet but it does tend to clog more. Mineral spirits tends to be a tighter cut of the petroleum distillation curve and may have fewer impurities so clogging would be less of an issue.

I am looking at this like a chemist and just looking at the volatility and some composition. The various fuels are different but those aren’t necessarily huge differences. Most of them would work in a pinch and any of them from Coleman fuel to kerosene would be a far better alternative than gasoline.

Tourist in MSN

I bought my 111B in 1972 or 73.

I do not recall exactly when I bought my Sveas, but it was soon after that. There was a tiny little store on the edge of downtown Minneapolis that was moving. Their store was on the second floor of a small building, maybe a thousand square feet of showroom space. They had a box of stuff that did not work, I offered them some small pittance for all of their Sveas, there were four, they accepted it. I got them all to work but needed to buy a few parts. Someone else in the store saw that and then offered them even less for all of their 8R stoves, and they took that. I should have made my offer for the Sveas and 8Rs.

I last used one of my Sveas for backpacking in Grand Canyon in 2014. Still works.

staehpj1

I can attest to the fact that a well worn 1965 chevy van will in an emergency start and run very poorly on coleman fuel. It will knock and ping and rattle for at least a week after it is filled with real gasoline. Also it will throw a rod tight through the side of the block within a year if my experience is typical. Yes I know that from first hand experience.

cyccommute 

Yep. Octane rating of about 50. The 100 “octane” of the octane rating isn’t a straight C8 hydrocarbon but is instead 2,2,4-trimethylpentane which is also known as iso-octane. It has 8 carbons but is highly branched which makes it burn smoother. n-Octane, which is a straight chain C8 hydrocarbon, has an “octane” rating of -20. n-Heptane has an octane rating of 0. Both are present in fairly high quantities in Coleman fuel. Coleman fuel also has a fairly high benzene content which raises the octane rating to the paltry 50 octane. No wonder you threw a rod.

People often say that “white gas” is “pure gas” but, as you found out, it isn’t. It’s not even that closely related to gasoline. Given the high proportion of straight hydrocarbon, “white gas” would make an okay diesel substitute because it has a cetane number of about 60 which is the same as diesel fuel. But diesel engines are far more robust and less sensitive to fuels than gasoline engines.

staehpj1

Of the three I have only actually used the SVEA 123, but I never considered it cantankerous or particularly hard to start up. I always considered it about the most reliable stove I have used. The only time it is any trouble is when it is cold and even then it is better than many (most?) other stoves. Certainly butane stoves don't love cold weather either. In cold weather it did take a bit more effort to get started, but I never found it to be too difficult in the conditions where I used it. Maybe I never used it in really brutally cold conditions, but I have definitely used it in sub freezing temps to melt snow for water. One of it's larger cousins would probably have been better for that task, but it did the job. Sometimes it doesn't want to cooperate with spitting out some fuel to prime it. Instead of a lot of fooling around, some priming fuel in a little eye dropper bottle (or just an eye dropper to dip some fuel out of the tank) made cold weather starting a bit easier. Also some insulation under the stove is nice on snow or frozen ground. I always considered it a reliable, rock solid little stove That I could count on working every time.

Tourist in MSN

I agree. But I always found that it worked best if I added fuel to it before I lit it, and that meant removing the wind screen/pot support, and the skate key on the key chain was inconvenient to thread into the right hole with replacing the screen. And the windscreen really was not much of a windscreen. That said I used mine a lot.

I preferred the older version that did not have the built in jet cleaning needle, it primed faster. But I recall camping with someone that had a clogged jet, I asked her where her jet cleaning needle was, she said that there was some silver thing that she did not know what it did to she chucked it. Needless to say her stove did not work very well.

I camped a lot with a friend that had an 8R, we liked that over the Svea and he had the external pump for it too.

That said, the Svea with a Sigg Tourist cookset was better than the 8R.

staehpj1

Mine is the older version. I still have the original jet cleaning needle thingie in it's slot.

I agree that the key on the chain is a pain. I considered pitching the chain, but I just live with it

I use a craft foil screen if there is much breeze in addition to the one that the stove comes with, but take care to not allow it to overheat the stove. I used to just improvise some kind of wind break, but found the craft foil was worth a tiny bit of extra weight and bulk.

Tourist in MSN

This thread started over four years ago. I was not sure if I should start a new thread or add to some of the discussion from last month. Decided not to start a new one, as this might not be of interest to very many people.

Quoting from two posts above, first by TCS, second by me:

At the time that I saw those on the shelf, the first thing I thought of was that I should be prepared to use those in a pinch if I had to.

I researched those a bit more when I got home from that tour where I saw them in summer 2019. There are fittings you can use to transfer fuel from one of those skinny canisters to the short threaded canisters most of use use, and I bought some of those fittings, but my experience with those was that I had to be really careful or I would lose more gas in the transfer than I would like.

I would hate to be on a bike tour and be out of butane, then see one of those tall skinny canisters for sale and not be able to use it. The posting by TCS reminded me of that.

So I did another search for options. And I bought an adapter that will take a threaded type butane stove like many of us use onto a tall skinny cannister. This is what I bought. Shipping from Asia took over a month.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/353231854406

Ebay links disappear before these forum posts do, so I pasted the Ebay ad title here in case in a couple years someone wants to search Ebay to buy one:
Outdoor Camping Hiking Tripod Gas Stove Adapter Long Gas Tank Conversion Head

It looks like this.




On my scale it weights 97 grams.

Photo below is that adapter attached to a fuel tank and one of my stoves, an old Primus, I do not recall the model name. Works pretty good. Disregard the snow in the photo, it is February and I wanted to try it, the tank was warm and the stove worked fine for the half minute I tried it outside for the photo, but it was too light outside to see the flame.



There were no instructions with it, but it was easy to figure out. There are two tabs on the round mounting plate on the adapter. And the fuel canister has a disc on top with a cut out on part of the disc. You hold the canister approximately horizontal so that the cutout in the disc is up on top, you put the lower part of that disc behind the lower tab on the mounting plate, press the canister onto the adapter so that the cutout in the canister disc goes behind the upper mounting plate tab, you then twist the canister clockwise to lock it on.

Note that these tall skinny cannisters are butane, not a mix with iso-butane or propane. Thus, these tall skinny cannisters would be expected to perform poorly in cool weather. I assume that a wet towel or rag that is soaked in warm water and wrapped around the canister might be enough to warm up the fuel in the canister? I have not tried that but I know from experience that when it is cool, the butane/iso-butane/propane mix canisters work much better if they sit in a warm (not hot) water bath.

I plan to carry this adapter on future tours where I am using butane type stoves as a contingency in case I can only find the tall skinny butane cannisters in stores or for sale at campgrounds. I still plan to primarily use the short squat cannisters that most of us use, but this gives me a contingency plan if I can't find what I want.

Note that a few stoves will not work on this adapter, ones like the MSR Superfly that grip onto the big ring on top of the squat canisters will not work on this adapter. But most other stoves that thread onto the cannister should work fine without any difficulty.

staehpj1

Those tall butane canisters are very widely available, just from a different set of sources. They are pretty cheap and if you are willing to buy a case from a wholesale kitchen supply store you can probably find then for under $2 a piece for 8 ounce ones. Single ones can be found for $3 pretty widely. If I were to stick with gas stoves I might consider switching to these at least for some trips in warmish weather. It is about twice as much fuel as I'd usually carry when solo and using iso-butane

There are also adaptors for stoves with remote iso-butane tanks.

Tourist in MSN

I assume you mean like the tripod thingy under my stove and the hose on it, but the hose had a leak and I no longer use it. Was sold by Brunton.

staehpj1

What I meant was that there was an adaptor you could use to put the long canister on the stoves that originally came as tripod stoves with a remote hose for iso-butane, I was thinking of stoves like the Soto Fusion Trek, Optomus Vega, WhisperLite Universal, or some of the chinese models like Tomshoo

tcs

Some of the adapters just mentioned were pictured back in post no. 188.