Coleman Peak 1 Feather 400 B September 1997 as stamped on the stove. As received, so the pictures will tell the rest of the story. sam
Nice addition to your collection Sam. Only thing I don't like is the pot stands look a bit flimsy but then again you would not be putting a cast iron pot or skillet on it. I have a Coleman the later model and I can bend the pot supports with my finger. Love the black paint job though. Ron
Hey Ron, hopefully the heaviest thing I'll ever have to put on there is a Primus EtaPower! 8) Other than that, I don't think I'll be putting a cast iron pot or a cast iron skillet in my hiking pack as I go up and down the hills here. Gotta make that pack as light as possible, especially when I'm carrying vintage stoves around!!! Thanks for your comments! sam
Well Sam, a lesson I learned in the CA3 gathering is that in car camping as we did you can bring a suitable lighter skillet for cooking. I brough the lightweight stuff and had awkward moments trying to cook up a really good meal on a solo outfit. Lucky me HJ to the rescue with his skillet he found while on his hiking trips. Eventually we should organize a bigger stove gathering one day. Would be nice to see you and the others in person. Ron
a friend of mine gave me a 400 that was beat up a bit but worked perfect when i fired it up. i used it for parts to repair my 1995 442 but will order the parts i need to get it back into action when i get the time. nice stove
My experience is that these pot supports are quite resilient and will take the weight of a medium heavy pot/skillet ok. If it gets bent in transit, it is easily reshaped with no bad effect. I suspect the folding feet would probably give way before the pot support. On my 533 (or 508) which uses the same support, but no feet, I have often used a 10 inch cast iron pot for chili. Keeping it centered and balanced is the problem. Just another good reason to have both a backpacking stove (400, etc) and a "camp" stove (533 or suitcase).
i used one of these for many canoe trips,a month a year for around 15 years and it never failed.the legs would hold up a three quart pot filled with wash water with no problem.the only break down was the thin heat shield which broke away from it's screws.canoe tripping is not like hiking as you have to toss,and i mean toss,your packs around when loading and unloading the canoe at wilderness landings.anyway i replaced the shield from a older heavy Peak model and gave the stove a new coat of paint.the only heavy part on this Feather was that steel box in photo eight.the gas gets a second vaporization in there i guess and they must make it heavy to hold the heat.
Thanks for the photos, Sam. I actually recently won one of these stoves as part of an auction that included several other things that I was bidding on. I haven't had a chance to test fire it yet. That skillet that Ron is referring to was sort of a God send. It's a nice 10 or so inch heavy skillet that I found one day when I was out hiking. Maybe they abandoned it because it was heavy? Anyway, I recognized at once that it was a nice bit of kit and gave it a new home. Pretty darn nice skillet for something I just stumbled across. Glad it helped Ron too at CASG3. The lightweight stuff is nicer in terms of pack weight, but the heavy stuff is what you need for good cooking. HJ
I'll have to side with itchy on this one. I've also used a 533 and a 400A on my canoe trips. Since the weight is oriented vertically on the pot supports, they have plenty of strength. Just think of how a strong an egg is if it's squeezed from it's length vs. it's width. I HAVE bent the tank wall on a 400Feather when one of the legs gave way under weight, but the pot supports remained undamaged. The weak spot in this design is the tank wall itself....at least this was my experience.
Have to agree with HJ on the skillet. I tried for years and years to do normal pan frying with all sorts of aluminum, steel, titanium whatever, light weight fry pans. NONE of them EVER satisfied me with anything near controlled cooking and reasonable no stickiness, even with copious amounts of grease. I used to carry those toothpaste tubes full of Crisco to no avail. Even the teflon coated backapck pans were worthless in my opinion. Eggs were very hit or miss. Only thing I think cooked OK was bacon, nah even that burned. Once I got smart and decided to carry a few extra ounces for a decent fry pan I have been Happy ever since. I have one maybe 8 inch and one 10 inch aluminum teflon coated pan with folding handles. Both are medium thickness aluminum. There is no name on the 8 incher which I have owned since the 80s, but it has given me excellent service and almost looks new. The 10 incher I bought in 2004, I think it is a GSR brand and has those funny spiral grooves on the bottom for even heat/decoration? Both work quite well. My experience and from reading is that the problem with most backpack pans is that they are just too thin so the heat does not conduct evenly and more importantly doesn't conduct slowly. So there are hot spots in the thin metal and you spend a lot of time yo yo'ing from too hot to too cold because the heat transfers too quickly thru the metal. The thicker pans conduct heat more evenly and slowly so the pans work as well as most home fry pans. Not quite as good as cast iron but as good as a good aluminum teflon pan. My worst pan is also my most expensive. A titanium teflon coated pan that is absolutely worthless and has warped so the center is high like a road bump. This happened after only 3 or 4 uses. I can think of nothing I have cooked that might work passingly well in this pan. It is an expensive table decoration. A boyscout cook kit would do better. Buck up, stiff upper lip, carry a few ounces of extra weight in your fry pan, your stomach will be happier. Jim Henderson
Hi Not meaning to highjack this thread. I also hate thin frying pans but there is something you can do. If you cut a disc from 3mm aluminium sheet that just fits inside (just so it packs easy) your biggest light weight pan. You can use it under any of your pans and it will mimic quite closely a proper quality frying pan.
Well, if you guys are going to talk about pans, I might as well throw in my 2 cents!!! When I go backpacking, I try to carry the lightest equipment possible since most of my hiking involves going up steep hills and climbing rocks, I can't be weighed down by heavy pans. The only thing I'll carry that's heavy is my stove, which could possibly be as heavy as a Coleman 530, but that's the only thing! My backpacking frying pan is this little guy. It cooks eggs, bacon, fish, meat, and just about anything really well. It weighs in at about 3 ounces. Perfect equipment for my needs. It's made of very strong tin. I guess some of you propose carrying one of these around or one of similar size. I would carry it but only on those camps where it's all flat land and close to the head of the trail. This one weighs in at about 3.5 pounds and is excellent at cooking, perfect heat distribution, etc. I'm sure there are other aluminum pans that would do the job too. Otherwise, this one goes car camping. I've never taken it backpacking. Too heavy. Now for serious cooking, I use the following and I usually take this when I'm truck camping. 8) It's the best at cooking up just about everything, from eggs to steak to any of the native fish. It measures 14 inches across the top and 12 across the bottom, I believe, and I think it weighs a good 10 or 12 pounds - it's heavy!! This honey would break this stove and many others. I use it on tougher stoves like my 500 and suitcases. My Opti 111's start to buckle and I'm scared to break off a leg on my 3-leg brassies, except on my Optimus No. 2, which is built for big stuff! I would definitely use this on my British No 3 double burner. sam
Hi Gary's patented stove levelling system, available from a store near you. Actually if you look closely they are religious pamphlets, they were being handed out in the market place and I needed some packing. Now I go prepared with some of these. Wedges for laying laminate flooring work a treat.
Hey Stoveguy, Got one of these from a family member who, for health reasons, has decided to stop hiking/camping. Contradictory in my mind, but he passed me some nice gear. I lit the stove first time...excellent burn. Second time wouldn't start. Nothing at all coming out of the burner. Also the pump will not twist...and they should, correct? Really hoping to get this one working but no clue where to start. Thanks, Rae
Rae, That pump should twist open (counter clockwise) or twist close (clockwise). I'm surmising that you A) lit the stove, which had pressure in it from before, without pumping or B) pumped the stove with the pump check valve wide open, and now can't get any pressure in the stove due to the check valve not allow the stove to pressurize. One reason for the pump not turning is the check valve stem in the pump is all gunked up from sitting for so long. I've filled the pump tube with carb cleaner for a few days and then let the chemicals do all the work and that seemed free up the stem. You don't really want to force it open since the stem is made of soft brass and can twist badly. The method above should work for you. After you get things loosened up, you'll need to clean out the tank since what could be locking up the pump valve stem is old dirty fuel, likely unleaded fuel. There's more you can do but you'll have to get that pump valve stem loosened up first before proceeding from here. Other things you could check are the fuel cap gasket and pump itself. The fuel cap should have a soft gasket to make an air-tight seal. The pump should also be soft with no cracks or hardness. Both of these are easily replaced. Check back when you can, sam
