Hi fellow stovies, I have recently acquired a very nice Jet-Gaz Sidemat Propane double burner camp stove or at least a pick nick or tailgate stove. The stove was made for Mountain Products Corporation by Jet-Gaz. I have not been able to find out much history on MPC except it was around in the 70's and was probably bought out in the 80's or 90's, but by who I haven't been able to find this information This stove was made specifically for use in the US. When I first fired it up both burners were a little anemic with the left burner being the worse of the two. The pictures will show the left burner not producing the flame required. I did check out both jets and found the gauze filters on both were partially plugged, so I removed the filters on both and found a pricker to clean out the jets. With the jets cleaned and orifice cleared the flame pattern was much better. I did a tea test before cleaning up the jets and fount the right burner brought the water in the tea kettle to a rolling boil in 8 minutes and the left burner took 12 minutes. After cleaning I resized the jets to 0.25mm and then redid the tea test. Both burners performed well. My tea kettles hold almost 2 liters and with the jet resizing the water now comes to a boil in 7 minutes. I haven't been able to find a production date for this stove, but it did have it's original instructions and on the paperwork it is printed MPC 8-74. Now this could be a generic customer warning and ecology notice so it could have been made at anytime but due to the funky orange color I believe it was made sometime in the 70's. This stove has a nice setup for holding the propane bottles. One can use either the 14.2 or the 16.4 ounce. Why anyone would want to use the 14.2 ounce propane bottle is beyond me. Here is the US you will find plumbers using the 14.2 ounce with their torches and it is almost twice as expensive as the 16.4 ounce. The fraternal twins. I like my twins and I have the smaller 1 liter kettle. After jet cleaning and resizing. I only showed the right burner because both were identical in performance. Rolling boil time improved from 8.5 minutes down to 7 minutes on both burners. Pretty good improvement. I only showed the one kettle boiling because boiling water looks like boiling water no matter which kettle I pictured.
Hi Stu, Thanks for the compliment. I too like the burner tubs and the flame pattern that is produced. Since getting the jets reworked it performs much better. These particular burner tubes remind me of the US Military's new MBU v3 cook stove. It has a similar type of burner tube and it produces a very unique flame pattern. Here is the burner assembly. The thing I don't like about the MBU stove is it is electronic and heat plus electronics just don't mix very well. They have many problems with this stove. You also need 24 volts to operate this stove. All in all a simple stove is the best stove to use. Cheers, Norman
