I'm an old guy, and in my youth grew up with gasoline pumps that were marked "ethyl" or "white"... and somewhere in the 70s, during the transition to catalytic converters and away from leaded to unleaded gasoline, I started actively acquiring hurricane supplies...the Coleman single and double mantle lamps, and the double burner camp stove, lights, etc...

fast forward... like my gas powered chainsaw, the pump up lanterns and stoves didn't get put away well, and always needed to be "tweaked" or rebuilt to get them to work... so replaced the Coleman fuel/white gas appliances with propane... #1 and 25# with adapters... gave away the stove (didn't know there was a propane adapter), but still kept a M1950 GI gasoline single burner stove... somewhere along the way the GI stove is now missing.. so bought myself a replacement for Christmas... one of the Coleman multi fuel single burner stoves with a generator designed for unleaded gasoline... Coleman fuel and unleaded gas..seem to have come full circle...

http://www.amazon.com/Coleman-1-Burner-S...ulti+fuel+stove

I like the purity of the coleman fuel,AFAIK it never goes bad,cost 8 dollars/gal around here,I store several.I leave my stoves,lanterns filled with fuel,never had a problem with doing that,may be wrong,but has worked here.

I too remember when you could buy white gas at the station,but only at a few.

I bought a Coleman lantern that is unleaded gas certified from the 1940's late (1947?),nickle plated,looks brand new,works like a charm,I love coleman products,esp. the older ones.

Ebay is an excellent source for lanterns,older 2 burner stoves are a dime a dozen at thrift stores.

This is what my lantern looks like,love the thing,such quality.

spuds... my #242C lantern (mfg. Dec 1949)came to Florida with us in 1955... not quite as good cosmetically as yours... lot of neglect on my part...

Unleaded gas has too much "environmental" crap added nowadays that they actually produce more of poison when burned in stoves, and if you got the type spiked with ethanol it'll eat all the seal and plastic parts in your stove.

Not worth the saving over coleman fuel or kerosene.

That's an interesting point. Do new lanterns/stoves now that can use gasoline actually say they are compatible with the newer gasoline/ethanol blends? Otherwise, like you said, certain components are going to fail prematurely unless the manufacturers already use materials that are safe and just haven't bothered to make any specific mention of it in the instructions.

super lamp spuds--
i can't walk away from a $5 Coleman 2 burner at a yard sale so i have a stack in the basement..same with a lamp if i find one but they are not as common.
i get my Coleman fuel when i see it going for around $8 a can and buy four or five cans.i have that much stored away not for anything more than the next camping trip.
i got lucky last summer and got eight of those propane bottles,not the ones for the torch,for $4 and at another sale a Coleman propane lamp NIB,not even the mantles had been used.
next car camp we go on i'll try the lamp and a big one burner propane stove.if i like the way those work i'll invest in a 35 pound tank and a adapator for re-fills.

I was searching ebay for the Coleman lamp and found it in the counter at the Mil Surplus store,think I paid around 45? for it,whatever was a super deal I thought.

Yup,must have 3 camp stoves too,LOL

Hard to beat Coleman.And hard to beat the quality of Coleman fuel IMO too.

I just bought a bunch of accessories for it,mantles,funnel,reflector and got this pour spout,cant wait to try it

I grew up with the classic Coleman two burner white gas stove and lantern, but I switched my units to propane years ago. I also obtained the adapters so that I can run them off of a 25# tank - much cheaper that way.

I know that a lot of people used regular leaded gas in their Coleman stoves back 20 years ago and as best I could tell it worked fine.

My understanding is that the new dual fuel stoves have some brass parts changed to SS but are otherwise virtually identical to the current stove designed around Coleman fuel. I have heard from a number of people that regular unleaded with or without alcohol works fine. I have not tried it personally.

One story I heard was that the main reason for the difference in price between the Coleman fuel version and the dual fuel version is that the duel fuel version costs much more for product liability insurance.

ILBob... I fired it up on unleaded just to make sure it worked OK...it is a backup to the propane dual burner camp stove... drained it well and relit it to burn out as much of the fuel as possible...put it back in the box, and hope I'll never have to use it...I bought a kero radiant heater, so have a 5gal supply of #1 on hand for it and the Dietz lamps...hard to find bulk kero where I live...

all this has got me thinking about the old two burner i have from American Gas Machine.i has to be pre WW2 and the fuel tank has a fill hole you could fit a gas station nozzle into.
i had it out and running at Thanksgiving when i made a pie in a Coleman oven and used the old stove.it ran great on Coleman fuel so i can see testing it out on auto gas,i just filled up a jug with middle grade gas for the snow blower so i have lots on hand to try out on that stove.
i'll take a few photos and have something by next weekend.

Ive read gasoline can clog them up,I dont know for a fact,just something I read there is a tube that gets plugged.

My one worry on the gasoline is ANY fumes are and ISSUE. I worked a Experiential Education camp for teens as the equipment manager and we had the 1980's "official" silver dual fuel Coleman stoves (single burner), and we never used anything but white gas. The white gas is seemingly less explosive (perhaps??) than gasoline. It always made me nervous thinking of lighting and storing gasoline for that purpose. I suppose to HAVE the option is nice, but as a "normal" operating fuel.......not for me. In a practicing for a "situation" where other fuels not available...OK.

Some old mountaineering buddies had a saying "A Peaker is a Leaker" in reference to the Peak 1 line Coleman used to have. I think the issue was around altitudes and in backpacking senarios as I never had a issue in normal situations and carried a different brand stove on altitude trips as the Colemans are heavy.

Ironwood

the generator,the tube that crosses the burner,gets clogged with whatever is added to gas these days.my thought about my "old" stove is that it was made to burn "old" gas and the tubing was made larger to allow for that.also i noticed that the burners have two small,sort of tiny,burners built into the sides of them which i assume were put there to help raise the temp inside the generator and burn off all the gas.

An interesting related thread over at candlepower forums...
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?176288-Coleman-White-Gas-Lantern-conversion