Coleman Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

I primarily car camp or primitive camp where the walk in is limited to about a half mile or so. I found the stove easy to use, easy to light, and great to cook with. I usually camp with about 4-8 people, and this is excellent for cooking in large batches. I made a gallon of buffalo chili on our last trip, it was easy to brown the meat at high temp and then to simmer the chili for about an hour or so. Heats up a 20 cup enamal coffee pot for cowboy coffee in about ten minutes. It is what it is, not for backpackers. Also handy to have around the house for hurricanes and power outages.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

[...]This stove is a great investment for the car camper.Some of the other reviews on this product are misleading do to user/reviewers inexpierience, incompetence and illiteracy, don't get lost in others confusion, this is a great stove. As with any gear you will want to do a test run at home to work out misunderstandings that you have after reading the instruction manual.[...] This stove and its dual fuel ability is far superior in cost and durability to any propane stove on the market ever.Just care for and maintain this old standby and it will keep you cooking for decades to come.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

Great stable stove with the excellent wind shelter. Very easy to use and set up. Fine tuning the burner is a bit fiddly. Use white gas and it cooks very efficiently and is cost effective. For car camping this is really quite a compact model.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

If you're looking for a lightweight, compact stove to heat water for your dehydrated meals or cook simple dinners, you should probably look at offerings from Jetboil or MSR. If you need to make coffee, hot water for oat meal or tea, and eggs with bacon for a group of 6 hungry campers, but don't want to deal with propane tanks, this stove is for you.

I bought this stove because I have a large supply of white gas that I use for my backpacking stove. It's easy to use and works great. Anything important is printed right on the bottom of the lid, so you don't have to worry about a piece of paper. The included filler makes refueling a breeze and the run-times on this stove are excellent.

It is easy to light, though I kept wishing for a built-in piezo lighter. Flame control is excellent. I have cooked eggs (up, over, scrambled, and omelets), bacon, pancakes, pasta (with field-made sauce), stew, and even bananas foster on this guy. Firing up the second burner results in about a 50% loss in power on the first one, but that kinda makes sense.... Just turn up the heat a little and balance the flames.

When I'm all done, I just wipe it down, close it up, and pack it with the rest of the car camping gear. My only modification is that I rubber-band a cheap lighter to the fuel tank for transport.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

When I car camp it is all about comfort. This stove makes all that possible.

Once you understand how the stove works, you can light it easily every time. In the case of Teachermom, I believe she overfilled the tank and flooded it. It is important not to over fill the tank. if you want to keep the yellow flames down in cold weather, light a little hand cleaner gel on the generator tube to prime it, but if you are even a little patient, you don't need it.

The right burner is hot and fast and is my main burner. The left burner steals power from the right, but a few extra pumps when needed and you can progress well. In this case, I boil the noodles on the right side and make the from scratch alfredo sauce on the left. (I said comfort.) The propane stove is great as well, but this white gas unit has much better low temperature control. Any time you have a long burn, you may have to give it a few pumps to get your pressure back up. It is low maintenance and dependable.

Difficult to clean? It's camping, wipe it down and get over it.

With a little practice, you will love this stove as much as I do.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

Great to use for car camping. Save on guessing about how many propane tanks to buy, I camped for three days on a 1/4 gal of gas about [$] not bad if worried about cost. heat very evenly, only draw back is size is to bulky. otherwise this is a no brainer.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

Decent burner but definitely not convenient in most situations. The burners light unevenly; the second burner is controller by a metal key that has no indicators so it's touch and go. I'm not WOW'd by the performance either - the fire seems to burn low which in turn takes forever to heat the food. Lastly, and this really bugs me, using a titanium pot on the burner leaves this black mess on the bottom of the pan/pot after you're done cooking. The white gas doesn't completely burn; didn't know that before I bought the thing.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

Great for car camping, but do a test run before you find yourself in the woods trying to get get food ready for hungry campers. The controls are finicky so it takes some trial and error to learn where you need to set the flame (esp. when using both burners) to get your food up to temp.

Our 1st run at it, we cranked the flame up a little more than needed and burned through our fuel faster than expected. By the 3rd use during the same outing though, we had locked in the levels needed to get water boiling and bacon frying on our GSI pots/pans while using as little fuel as possible.

This also feels like it is solidly constructed. As long as we keep the fuel lines clean, I don't anticipate needing to replace this for quite a while.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

Like almost all white gas products, this stove handily outperforms its canister propane counterpart -- and at a much lower fuel cost. White gas contains more energy than propane, so these burners are much hotter than propane burners. (IF the stove is pumped up and operating properly!) This is handy if you're dealing with boiling large quantities of water -- like cooking spaghetti for a hungry group.

That said, liquid fuel products (as opposed to canister fuel products) require skill and patience to master. Refueling can be messy if you're not careful -- and you'd better be careful, because white gas is extremely flammable and burns with a nearly invisible flame. Read the instructions carefully and practice lighting your stove at home. Just like learning to ride a bike it seems tricky and dangerous at first, but with practice it becomes second nature.

This stove is simply excellent, and has been on the market virtually unchanged for decades. It will last forever if you want it to, because all the necessary parts are serviceable/replaceable at a very reasonable cost. The dual fuel option is handy if you run out of white gas and can only find gasoline, but gasoline should not be used regularly unless you want to replace the generator. If the stove doesn't seem to be working properly after a few minutes of warm up, then you're doing something wrong. Re-read the instructions, start over, and practice!

Coleman's white gas products are reliable, capable, and very safe IF you understand their use and operation. I've been using white gas lanterns and stoves without incident for over 30 years -- since my Dad taught me how when I was about 12 years old. (Yes, just like with a knife or a firearm, a youngster can be taught to respect and properly handle things that have the potential to be dangerous if misused.)

Although I do occasionally use the stove for car camping, I primarily use it on the patio for boiling the large quantities of liquid required to homebrew beer. (Mrs. Balto Joe doesn't like the weird smell or potential for sticky boilovers in the house.) A 7 gallon stockpot fits nicely over both burners and it will reach and hold a rolling boil for 1.5-2 hours on a single tank.

On the negative side, this stove does not have an igniter -- I wish I could have given it 4 1/2 stars because of this. You have to light it with a match or long stem lighter. Remember to light the match or lighter FIRST, and then turn on the burner!

So if you want a stove that burns hot, is cheap to operate, doesn't send empty canisters to the landfill, and will last forever, buy this stove. Just make sure you understand that liquid fueled products require more skill and slightly more effort than their canister fuel counterparts.

Comments about Coleman 424 Dual-Fuel 2 Burner Stove:

Great stove. Have had mine for 10yrs, my brother has had his for 15yrs or so.

Teachermom: i just had the flame up issue this weekend. It was flooded. You may have overpumped and tipped it towards the nozzle end. If you pull it out and turn it on (AWAY from all flames) you should see NO liquid, just hear gas. If you see liquid, its not working right. Take out all the pressue. Check the rest of the stove (esp by loop thing) for any liquid, and get rid of the liquid (dry, shake, let evaporate,etc). Once that liquid is gone, repump and try again.

I just restarted mine in the garage, works like a champ again. I think we pumped it too high. Instructions say 35 times, but from 0 pressure, pump until you feel a bit of pressure back and then pump maybe a few more times. If you think the flame is too low, once you light, pump a few more times. If you have a full tank, you only need to pump <10times.