Good morning all, For this month's SoTM competition, I pulled out my Coleman 460 Handy Gas Plant. I believe that this is the largest stove that Coleman ever made from a power output point of view, rated at 55,000 BTU/hr output. For sure, it's a beast of a stove, great for when you need a lot of heat quickly. Of course, this one has a story. I bought it off the e-Place many months ago for little money, and it was clear from the e-Place seller's photos that it had sat in a dry place for years...but had been home to insects, and the burner was completely plugged up with something. 460's don't come up very often for sale, so I figured for little money they were asking I'd take the risk and buy it. Thankfully, it made it thru the post okay without any major damage. However, it was clear that it had been home to a collection of rodents and flying insects, most likely what we call mud-daubing wasps or simply "mud-daubers." The burner was COMPLETELY FULL of old wasp nest material, and all the burner slits were COMPLETELY plugged up. Removing the mud-wasp-nest material was job one. I picked at what I could with a collection of screwdrivers and picks, and then soaked in water and then the ultrasonic cleaner to remove the rest. That wasn't too bad. However, the burner slits were still mostly packed with crud. further inspection determined that this crud was likely rust, from the moisture of the wet wasp-nest material. I tried soaking it in the ultrasonic cleaner, made a slit-cleaning tool, tried picking at it with picks, and it wouldn't come out. Thinking about this some, it made sense, because as rust forms, it swells, so it was just rust, it was packed-in rust. I changed tactics and went for a chemical removing method - Evapo-Rust. I had a gallon left over from another project and for the next week, soaked the burner in a vat of Evapo-Rust. I'd use a wire brush to remove what I could between soakings. After about a week of doing this, I had most of the slits pretty nicely cleaned out. Using the home-made slit cleaning tool, I got the rest of them cleaned up. However, the burner isn't without significant damage. Some of the slits are well oversize from the rust while others are the original size. The rest of the stove was uneventful. The pressure gauge was totally rusted up. I tried to save it, but it was just too far gone, so it got replaced with the closest modern gauge I could find - another US Gauge 0 to 60 PSI unit of 2" diameter. I also installed a run-tee and a Schrader valve for a bicycle pump, as I don't have an original Coleman pump for it or it's 457G sibling. The generator was pretty clean, so it either was run on Coleman fuel (doubtful) or a high quality white gas or unleaded gasoline (maybe), or is just low hours (most likely). Parts of the stove are in GREAT shape, while others are not-so-good. In this photo, the stove is running. It's running just under 20 psi of tank pressure. I've never found an authoritative guide to usual / maximum operating pressure for these stoves, and 20 gives a good enough output that there's no need for me to run it any higher. Hard to see the blue flame, but it's there. These big Colemans absolutely HATE the wind. Very slow breeze this morning, yet somewhat of a flare-up. The original decal is long gone. Someone at one time painted the tank a blue color. This is not original, research shows that they were all black before Coleman switched to a green. My 457G is green. There is a good but of surface rust here and there. But mostly, it's in good shape. To clean the burner I had to remove the original screws - most needed to be cut as no amount of penetrating oil helped. The 460 tag. Getting a picture of this was difficult, as it's right under the burner. The rust on the metal parts is pretty bad in places such as this. The lettering on the main valve is not good. That sort of corrosion on the aluminum disk reminds me of what urine does to corrode aluminum, hence the rodent-nest theory. Yet, the control valve and the fuel line are in GREAT shape. A good shot showing the burner slots. In the extreme lower left, you see the width that Coleman had intended. The rest of the slots are a lot larger from the rust. Even with the slots being larger than stock and being irregular, the stove runs pretty good. The Handy Gas Plants / Heatmasters have an air adjustment to regulate the fuel / air mix, so I was able to tweak that to get a nice blue flame even with the larger slits. One of the supports is nearly rusted thru. I started tearing apart the stove to fix this, but couldn't get the threaded connection on the tank to budge. I figured I'd leave well enough alone. I mentioned a run-tee and Schrader valve for a bicycle pump earlier. Here's a good view of that. The phenolic adjusting valve is in really nice shape. These get broken easily, so having one that is not broken is nice. When I bought it, I asked the seller to remove the generator to protect it. This worked great to protect the knob and generator, but as we'll see shortly, it came at a cost. The new pressure gauge. The original on the stove was a US Gauge, 0 to 60 psi, 2" in diameter. Interestingly, my newer 457G has a smaller diameter pressure gauge. I asked the seller to remove the generator for shipment. And he or she did. But they made a real mess out of the screw that retains the generator! This is okay, while I've not yet identified what thread the original is yet, I probably can get or fashion a replacement. For now, the bunged-up original works fine, albeit I have to use locking pliers to install and remove it, as wrenches and sockets don't grip it properly. That's about it! thanks, ben
Another video. In this video, taken in time before the one above, you can see denatured alcohol burning in the "O"-shaped cavity on the front of the burner. These Handy Gas Plants have what's called a gassifier to ease starting, so most often, pre-heating isn't needed. But since I had the bottle of alcohol, why not? From what I understand, the gassifier mixes vapor in the tank with the liquid fuel going to the burner, so it's already a vapor when it gets to the generator.
Mine was missing the generator and got lucky to find a new one off the bay, I set it up to burn kerosene with a new genny tip and pricker tip. I had to solder up 5 small pin holes on the side of the tank, survived 50 lbs. of pressure from my compressor. Yours should hold heavy pots with the supports. Duane
@hikerduane - very cool! Nice working getting the tank fixed up. I tried running my 457G on kerosene once with the stock gasoline generator, didn't work well at all! Very yellow flame and no adjustment on the air valve would make it run properly with a blue flame. I'm going to assume that when you modified the generator tip and pricker you went with a smaller diameter orifice and pricker? I'd love to know more details, that sounds like a very nice conversion to go from gasoline to kerosene. thanks ben
Ben, You need the genny tip from a Coleman 413 or 426 and the needle and holder GT-29 (471-2381) from Oldcolemanparts. Duane
You still need to use the preheat cup along with using a torch on the genny body on kero. Duane PS: The torch may blow out the burner flame when trying to light, so there may be a techique to light.
