Looking for friends?

Are you sitting home lonely because nobody ever emails you?

Heres what you do, buy something from Harry and David. Heck maybe you should just do that anyway, Moose Munch is tasty but when you do be prepared for the DELUGE of emails Harry and David is gonna send you. 2-3 a day is not unusual, you'll be reminded that Christmas is "just around the corner" and they'll tell you about all the good crap they've got that you might want to buy...

On second thought you could order from Figi's, its cheaper, the shipping is faster and they don't send you a stack of emails...

190D Adventure!

Red 1984 190D 173,000 miles, dead engine and its mine. $250 because the timing chain broke and the engine might be garbage. It might be rebuildable but it might be garbage.
Originally this was to be a parts car for my other 190D. This car is pretty much rust free and mine isn't so I figured a couple body parts, the diff, the electromagnetic fan clutch and some interior bits. Maybe sell a couple bits to recoup my costs and off to the scrapper.

On second look though this is way too nice a car to do that to... It turns out replacement engines are pretty easy to obtain at reasonable cost so I need to talk to my mechanic and see if he's hip to swapping engines or knows somebody who is. This could become a nice driver.

8!

Yes another one... This is a Coleman 242 (ahh, theres a letter but I can't remember right now, "C"?) 1949 I think, I forget...
Yeah its not supposed to be blue, the fount is nickle underneath. I have no idea why somebody would paint a nickle fount blue... Originally I was looking for a fount to replace the bent one on my 249. It turns out that won't work since the 242 uses a narrower hole in the top. The guy who had offered to sell me a fount also had some 242 lanterns and for $15 I couldn't pass one up. The $15 apparently goes to support the International Coleman Collectors Club which is a good cause too.

I *think* the blue paint will come off and I hope to be able to shine this one up. We'll see how it goes.

Coleman 249 Scout

I don't remember if I've written about the Scout before. I bought it on eBay back last summer some time. I'd had a bunch of trouble with it because the generator was bent and would leak at its base. I finally sucked up the $20 price tag and bought a replacement. With the replacement and a #24a Peerless (Coleman #99 equivalent) mantle it lights up like a CHAMP!
This is a kerosene 350cp lantern. Kerosene lanterns are fun because you have to preheat the generator to get them to light. If you don't preheat you get liquid Kerosene and big flames (been there, done that!) So you fill the preheat cup with denatured alcohol and let that burn which preheats the generator. As the flames are just about to go out you crank open the valve, kerosene vapor heads into the mantle and you get light.



My lantern takes about 5 minutes to get lit but the results are great, 350 cp is about like a 60 watt bulb so its plenty to comfortably read by. The best thing is that this lantern makes very little smell. I had it burning in the living room yesterday for a couple hours and while I could definitely smell it the smell wasn't objectionable. In the winter its nice to burn inside because of the heat, think small electric space heater and you get an idea how much heat this throws.

Now I just need a contact with a fuel distributor so I can get road taxed, undyed kerosene. I want it without dye because the dye will gum up the generator. To get kerosene without dye you need to pay road tax. I'm okay with that, the gallon of kero I have came from the hardware store and was (I think) $12. If I could get kero with the road tax for $5 (which would be a considerable premium considering diesel fuel is under $3/gal) I'd be pleased...

My Wenzel lantern is also kerosene, it'll be interesting to see how it does. I'm waiting on parts, apparently they've shipped so I expect to be able to play with it this weekend.

Organization

Spent a little time today going through all my posts and adding tags for them, this will help in searching out specific posts or threads of posts. Thus if you see a tag at the bottom of a lantern post that says "lantern" you can click on it and get all the lantern posts I've made. Coleman stuff? Click on Coleman. Some I've even made more granular like "Coleman 202".

Enjoy!

This also got me reading some of my older posts. Expect a few "then and now" type posts in the near future.