While we have a brand new single burner cooktop that runs on butane, we prefer to use my grandfather’s Coleman two burner stove which was manufactured in September of 1973. They run on white gas which is inexpensive and readily available and burns clean. I recently found this stove in my mom’s garage and to my surprise it still had white gas in it that was at least 20 years old and it fired right up without any issues.
There is a hot (see what I did there) debate on what the best camping fuel is….white gas, propane, butane, kerosene, or wood. We don’t want to use wood given the inherent danger of wildfires from sparks. Kerosene is nasty and oily. Butane is fine but can be hard to find in large containers for extended trips. White gas is clean and inexpensive but needs to be pressurized and can leak since it travels in liquid form. Propane is available everywhere, inexpensive, and there are a ton of different container sizes to choose from.
One of our two hot water heaters runs on propane so we carry a 5lb small tank in our outside cargo box. Since we already carry propane it seemed obvious for us to choose propane as a single fuel source for all of our camping needs. But then comes the challenge of figuring out if we can convert our 1973 Coleman stove from white gas to propane. At first I thought this would be easy as I quickly found a conversion kit made by Stansport. Two issues came up. The first is that I found it hard to find someone who would sell me one and ship it to CA. Given CA laws many online stores would not ship it to that state so I had it shipped to a friend in NV and then I picked it up during one of my visits to Tahoe. The second issue is that the conversion kit is made to work with 1lb disposable propane tanks….which sort of defeats the point for us because that would be another fuel tank to carry around. Not to mention those are expensive for what they are and create waste.
So I was on the hunt for a way to connect my 5lb propane tank to the Stansport propane conversion kit. Online was not that much help because most people simply convert their Coleman to work with the 1lb tanks but to hook up the Coleman to a 5lb tank you needed to understand regulators and gas fittings. The solution is to get a propane gas line that does not have a regulator built in, on one end connects to the common propane bulk tank fitting, and on the other end has a fitting for the female end of a 1lb propane tank. Sounds easy but it was actually hard to find the right gas line. In the end this gas line did the trick.
Now we have a single bulk fuel tank that you can hook up to your old Coleman stove as well as our water heater. And while the 5lb propane tank works for us, this solution would work just as easy on a 10lb or 20lb tank. I think my grandpa would be proud seeing this stove get used by his great grandkids.