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Friday, April 30, 2010

Another Coleman Lantern for Preps

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a sickness. We're having neighborhood garage sale through the end of the week-end and my neighbor called last night and said he had a Coleman lantern I could have first shot at. He wanted $3 but it's a garage sale so I haggled with him and finally settled on $5. It's a May, 1972 model 200A.

If you pick any of these up here are a couple of tips for you.

1. Tap the tank. If it rings then it's a good empty tank. If it thunks, then it either has rust or fuel in it. Take the cap off. If there's no fuel, put it down and walk away. If you can see that it has slight rust inside then dump 40-60 BBs and a little fuel in it and shake the daylights out of it. The BBs will shine it right up. The hardest part of this is getting the BBs back out.

2. Always check the air intake tube. It's a favorite spot for spiders to build nests and they will choke the airflow right off. I've found about half of the lanterns have them. I use some braided automotive wire, skin about a 1/4 inch or so and bend the wires backwards. I insert it into the fresh air tube and it will clean out any webs inside. If the lantern flares up and won't burn correctly, suspect a spider web.

3. Never store a lantern with gas inside the tank. For some reason it causes moisture and the tank will rust. Always empty the tank and let it dry out before storing it.

Here are some before and after pics of the latest addition to the preps family.

As purchased....



After about an hour. Completely disassembled, cleaned and reassembled.



And what it's supposed to do...

1 comment:

  1. It's a pretty 200a. I've got an ugly, raggedy dead paint burgundy that makes me happy. Other lanterns might be "better" but I love the 200a the most.

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