I have got my dirty mitts on a coleman 424 - dual fuel, 2 rings.
Never used one before. Worth hanging onto? Any opinions?
They're fine. To be honest the terms 'dual fuel' and '2 rings' are both stretching the point. It runs on white gas (Aspen 4, Coleman fuel, maybe heptane or thereabouts). It will run on petrol (gasoline) but I don't recommend it. Petrol stinks, and I think that goes against the more 'domestic' than 'camping' nature of the product. Using petrol in one of these stoves produces goodness knows what nasty combustion products. We seem to have reached the conclusion on this forum that Coleman burners (specifically the generators) aren't quite so tolerant of gasoline as some other burners. It won't run at all on paraffin, lamp oil, diesel, essence F, alcohols and some other common fuels. At least on mine there's only one generator so you have to light the burner on the right hand side and then open a kind of valve to let some of the gas it generates through to the left side. You can't just have the left side going on its own. It's bulky and it isn't really light. The construction is IMO a little bit flimsy but adequate. In operation the flame is quiet, almost like a gas flame. Good wind shielding. Very nice to use, very controllable. Excellent working surface for pans, you won't find much better unless you're in the Caravan Club. Good sized fuel tank. Lighting it without making a big pool of highly inflammable liquid somewhere is a bit of an art.
Definitely worth hanging onto, I won't be selling mine.
