coleman dual fuel 428 stove (3 burner)

I bought an 18 yr old 3 burner on ebay to get away from carrying and refilling gas cylinders. Goes like a train!
Genuine fuel is quite expensive at $7 a litre but I bought 20 litres of Shellite at the local fule supplier for $60. I take 10 litres with me and will use unleaded if that runs out.

Thats strange that you say Shellite causes problems.
I have 3 dual fuel appliances & they all work much better on Shelliite.

I might try some premiun Unleaded next time because it is cheaper than Shellite.

Cheers
Stu

I thought it was strange too. Perhaps it wasn't just due to the shellite, but the lantern was running fine, used it until just about empty and then next trip put shellite in and it wouldn't go (generator seized up). So in that case perhaps running it almost empty was the culprit. But we used shellite in the stove too towards the end of the trip.

Shellite is not only more expensive but our stove seemed to burn thorough it a lot quicker than ULP as well. I also thought that the flame seemed hotter with the petrol. The issues that we had with the stove was kind of like flare ups, like you get when you don't bleed a gas stove after each use. Maybe I'm not following the right procedure for turning it off but as far as I can tell you turn it off and then the system bleeds itself anyway until the flame goes out. Again I can't say shellite is the pure cause but the problems started after I used it.

The reason given to use Premium was something to do with the octane rating.

I don't know my chemistry but I'm guessing the shellite runs cleaner and thus probably has less lubricants in it, perhaps that's not so good for the generator. But then again the dirtier the fuel is the more chance of things blocking up I would have though. Maybe my problems were using a dirty fuel followed by a clean one....(I'm thinking like problems you can have using gas in petrol cars).

All a generator has to do is preheat the fuel to turn it into a gas, and out of shellite, Coleman fuel and unleaded petrol, unleaded has got to be the "dirtiest".
But that doesn't compare with kerosene in a kero pressure lamp which is so dirty you have to use metho to light the lamp to avoid smoking up the glass, and frequently use the "pricker" to clean the jet. Yet these generators last a fair while and usually fail when the fine wire of the pricker bends or breaks.
So anything running unleaded, Coleman or shellite has got to be having it easy.
Maybe the problem is in the jets as the tolerances could be critical. When you install a gas cooktop they supply different jets for use with LPG or natural gas. Just guessing, maybe the Coleman fuel needs the same jet diameter as petrol, and shellite was not invited to the party.
But I'm still using my shellite till it's gone, then try the premium unleaded which, as has been pointed out, is cheaper.

Interesting about the jet tolerances. I know our gas cooktop at home was horrible when it was first installed..... there just wasn't enough adjustment when the knobs were turned and the heat couldn't be turned down enough to simmer (from memory). Now this was all fixed when the gas fellow did some adjustment and set it suitably for bottled gas rather than LPG or whatever it was set for from factory! The manual does say it can be adjusted to suit different flow rates. So that makes sense as to why a dual fuel stove might burn through shellite quicker than ULP.

The experience with the camping (gas) stove was that it was most detrimental was not bleeding the unit after use (ie turn the gas off at the bottle and then stove off when gas is out of the lines). We had trouble with flare ups and blocked jets until we figured that out, thereafter we used a camping stove while living in the shed (building a house) for a year and a half without a problem except an oring on the hose connection pretty much disintegrating!

When my Husband spoke to a camping store (where we sourced the spare generators) they mentioned something about bleeding the coleman dual fuel. I haven't got around to looking for online manuals for the unit we have but I didn't see any procedure different to just turning the knob off. He must have been thinking of the gas stoves! And I admit the problem we were having with it were slightly similar to problems you get on a gas stove due to not bleeding it.

It's funny the conflicting advice you get though, we were told when we brought the stove that we should use Shellite, even to just run it through every 3rd tank or something. Since that didn't work out terribly well during our trip we tried to find Coleman fuel so went to a few different camping stores, that's where we were given the advice not to use Shellite and that we should use Premium Unleaded.

So I guess we'll see what difference premium unleaded makes on the next trip!