My Svea 123 is almost 30-years old, and I have never in my life bought Coleman fuel. It’s run great every time I have used it, I buy just the regular gasoline for it.


One thing they tell you is to not let them run out of fuel as it will burn the wick. My Svea has run out of gas at least 4 or 5 times a year for every year I have owned it. Never a problem. Put more gas in it and relight it and it’s back to normal cooking.

I’ve seen them on sale on e-bay for as little as $40.00, and as much as $100.00 for a new one. I would say it’s worth every bit of $100.00 for a new one. It will still be working when you are dead.

Don’t let the price of this stove keep you from buying one. For a survival item it’s great. Few things are able to give you the quality and service life this stove can.

If I ever needed to replace mine, price would not come into play, It’s simply the best gas stove made.

Other stoves (Coleman & MSR) are made with plastic. Also the current trend in backpack stoves seems to be to have a separate tank attached by a hose. This to me is a weak link that will give you fuel leaking problems down the road. Coleman Apex 1 & 2 stoves are known for the hose leaking fuel. The Svea is all one compact unit, it’s simple & reliable. It also comes with a 1.5 cup pot that fits over the stove; this way in a survival situation you always have a pot with your stove to boil water. I don’t think any other camp stove comes with a pot like it does.

Mine didn't come with a cover (eBay) but I found a couple cans that fit it quite well.

Interesting and good to know that the Svea works well with regular unleaded, thanks.

Here is a place that sells new Svea’s ($100.00) they also sell rebuild kits for them, they may have a new pot you can buy. It has a picture of the stove with the pot.

http://www.scoutgear.com/kd123r.html

All this talk of the Svea 123 brings back memories by the score. I went through two (?) of these as a young bushy-tailed backpacker. Great stoves once you get to know them.

The ones I bought in the '80s had a sticker that said something like: in (these countries in Europe), use only lowest grade automotive fuel; in North America, use only white gas. From that, I assume it was a regulatory thing. I ran an old Svea on auto gas just for the heck of it, and it ran fine. I suppose it would gum up the wick in regular use.

Frankly, if I were burning auto gas, I'd put a close-fitting lid on my pot. No need to flavour the tea with funky additives.

I recall seeing new Svea 123s at a couple of outdoors shops in Edmonton as recently as a few years ago. I imagine they're still around.

These days, if I'm carrying a bomber multi-fuel stove, it's the MSR XGK. Parts, pumps, seals and rebuild kits are available in any decent outdoors shop, or by mail.

BTW: For the care and feeding of the Svea 123, and a whole lot of d@mned excellent writing about backpacking, philosophy of the outdoors, etc., get Colin Fletcher's "Complete Walker" v.1,2,3 or 4. You will not regret it. I have rebound and constantly re-read v.3 for the last 25 years. Darn him for writing so well.

Hi Hacksaw,

The Canadian Coleman site does not mention using automobile unleaded gas in their multi-fuel stoves at all, but the USA site specifically mentions not using Canadian Automotive Gasoline in any Coleman product (including multi-fuel items), follow the link in the original post for the exact warning.

I checked out the link you provided about gasoline additives, there is sure a lot more stuff in gas now than there used to be.

Thanks,

Mike

This post got me interested in the SVEA 123 stove, Ebay has quite a few and one seller even has a few spare parts as well, hope this helps.

if you think the svea 123r is to expensive, you can get the 8r hunter. The business parts are identical, but i fin the 8r hunter to be more easily found and there are plenty of copy's of the 8r. A new russian made clone van be bought at 15euro's a piece.

The MSR Whisperlite International will run on most things and it has a shaker pin inside the valve that moves aruond while you walk the remove any clog the fuel tube is also larger than most to accomidate even the nastiest of fuels.

SwampDonkey,

Not to disagree with the group here, but I was glad (20 years ago) to dump my Svea 123. Without the mini pump, it is a pain to use at altitude or in the cold, even with the pump it could be better. It is not particularly fast, but for some that is not important. I never used auto gas (the stove was clearly marked not to use it), but even then it required cleaning. The prick (before shaker cleaning) was easy to break or loose. The one piece design is too tall and hard to stabilize in rough terrain or on an ensolite pad in the snow (I finally made a plywood base). If you like this type of stove, I think the Optimus 8R was a much better design (again, get the pump), but I shifted to an MSR XGK and never looked back.

The two piece design works very well, keeps the center of gravity low and, with the original ridgid fuel tube, made a very broad base. The newer ones use a flex tube, but include feet for stability. I have not had a problem with the plastic parts even though I am a klutz :-( and carry lots of hard stuff in my bag. They are also the easiest stove I have seen to repair in the field. The designer actually used them in the field! Parts are available in most of the world (try finding Coleman parts in Katmandu).

I recently replaced my original with the new EX model and it is even better. I have not used auto gas in either one, but the old one ran mostly on aviation gasoline. In both cases, in the old days, the biggest safety hazard was the lead in the gas. Clogging is not hard to deal with. If you want to simmer with this type of stove, get the Dragonfly or Simmerlite (I think the Dragonfly has a larger range of fuels). It is a bit of a problem with the XGK, but it is the best water boiler of the bunch.

Respectfully,

Jerry

To get myself back on topic a bit, I've drooled over all those cool multi-fuel/exotic fuel/blended fuel component/contained backpackable stoves, and realized that nothing seemed to work any better for me than the el cheapo screw on propane bottle stove I've used in the past. No windscreen included, just a simply 8,000 or so btu burner made of stamped and perforated sheet metal with heavy wire legs or more sheet metal struts. No pumping, no priming, cheap as you can get bottled fuel that lasted me and two other guys all week long. If I wanted it to make even hotter fire, I splurged and bought a bottle of Mapp gas and lived it up. It didn't seem to noticably weigh down my pack any more than the expensive ones I borrowed from friends, and you couldn't beat the economics ($15 for the stove and 99 cents a bottle back then).

You might have to tuck the bottle under an armpit and suffer for a couple minutes in the nastiest of weather, but that wasn't so different from some of the other touted systems. If it broke or got lost, well, go back to the store and get another one.

I used two of those little el cheapo propane stoves to do an awful lot of expedtionary and impromptu cooking, and they've held up pretty well, have been totally reliable, and are still in my grub box ready to go. Coming up with my own refill adapter for a 20 lb tank cut the cost on them little bottles down to almost ziltch.