A few months ago, my father gave me some camping gear he bought in the 1970s when he and my oldest brother started camping. He gave me a red Coleman lantern, and a large, green Coleman, dual burner stove. I remember using both pieces on occasion when he took me camping as a young boy. On the last camping trip we did together, when I was in college, neither the stove nor lantern would work. It was a dark night, and our food was cold. Both pieces were put on the shelf for many years.
I have rebuilt many stoves and lanterns and am very familiar with what parts are the usual suspects when they don’t work. Both stoves and lanterns are very simple and have very few parts, so diagnosis is usually quick and easy and so is correcting the issue. Nine times out of ten, the main problem is the leather or cork pump cup. Over time, it becomes brittle and dry resulting in a leaky seal when pressurizing the fuel tank. Until a couple of years ago, most stores that had a sporting goods aisle had replacement silk mantles and Coleman rebuild kits on hand. They were commonly found and always in stock. At one point, I bought half a dozen or so of these kits to have on hand.
Over the years, as I rebuilt miscellaneous stoves and lanterns, I used up most of the parts in those kits I had stocked up on, so when I started taking my dad’s stove and lantern apart, I did not have a complete kit available. I went by every local store that used to carry the rebuild kits and I could not believe how difficult it was to find the Coleman lantern/stove rebuild kits. They used to be quite common. I suppose that less and less people use the old-style stoves, so the rebuild kits take up shelf space and do not sell very often. I ended up buying two rebuild kits online.Continue reading“Modernizing an Old Coleman Stove, by Lodge Pole”
