Just curious but would your average Optimus\Primus paraffin stove be happy using diesel fuel ?

If we're talking about the classics - no not generally, although Ed has bought a special burner to convert one of his standard stoves. I'm sure he will pick up this thread & give more detail.

Actually, this is my workhorse Hipolito 2, which I bought NIB a year and more ago. It has a burner modified by Force10 of British Columbia to burn diesel in addition to kerosene. The burner is an adjustable silent; the one thing that looks different about it is that it has a very large spirit cup.
When I first got this, I called Force10 to ask about it. They are a company well-known in the boating world for marine stoves. What I was really looking for was information about Hipolito; I figured if they were selling these they would have this info. But they hadn't for a few years, and couldn't give me any leads. Hipolito was perhaps the last European manufacturer to stop making these stoves, sometime in the 1990s, but I still have virtually no information about them.
I haven't used the stove with diesel. I infer from the spirit cup that diesel needs a lot of preheating; what other modifications were necessary, I don't know. The burner itself by the way is a Portuguese burner. Obviously, in the marine world, a stove that will burn diesel could be handy. I use this stove several times a week in the kitchen, but always with kero or Clearlite.

Ed It would be interesting to know first hand from you how diesel works in this stove in comparasen to kerosene. Diesel being a dirtier fuel to kerosene would it blacken the pots? If the burner gets hot enough it just may not

Handi Albert

I'll run the experiment sometime soon and report.