WOW! Dale, that's definitely material for the "Deal of the Year" award! It doesn't get any better than that! Now, where can you buy "fresh" "Authentic Coleman" white (unleaded)gas that was refined in 1976?!? : )

Aww, just go down to the local gas station, with yer gallon can, stick the regular nozzle in it, and fill it up! Ain't that "unleaded gas?"
We used Amoco white gas for years, a lot cheaper than Coleman fuel! It didn't have any lead in it, either! And, our gasoline stoves never gave us any problems! And, you can use laquer thinner, too, but its pricey like Coleman fuel! Good to know that, in case you aren't near a gas station, but a hardware right around the corner!
OR------
Buy the propane converter hose and regulator, to use the small propane tanks (20 lb., or the even smaller tanks available at the discount, sell everything stores!

Actually, Coleman fuel is really "Naptha". There's been a lot of confusion in recent times about the term "white gas". Years ago (I'm sure you'll remember, Rusty), all cars run on "leaded gas". From my 1946 "Silver Streak" Pontiac to my 1954 Ford coupe, if you would have tried to run these cars on unleaded gas they would have knocked and rattled to no end! I think it was around 1964 that unleaded gas started to make it's debute and then in only certain cars - leaded gas was still available. But I'm getting ahead of my story ...

Back when leaded gas was the only fuel for your car, it did a terrible thing to your outboard motor ... the lead additive would carbon the thing all up. So a lot of gas stations would have a 55 gal drum of "raw gas", or sometimes refered to as white gas, and remember, there was no such thing as "Amaco White" ... in fact, there was no such company as Amaco ... there were such places as Standard Oil Company and when forced to break up into smaller companies, there came American and later Amaco. The old raw gas (or white gas) was really the first unleaded gas that had absolutely nothing added to it. "Coleman" fuel, or naptha, is refined a short step futher than the raw gas and has some slight trace of rust preventatives added to it so as to help it not corrode the inner workings of the gas lanterns and stoves. Although the raw gas that was available for the out board motors was found out to work just fine in the lanterns and stoves. I can remember Coleman wanted 35 or 40 cents for a gallon of thier fuel, you could buy the raw gas for fifteen cents a gallon!

Coleman lanterns of that era, with the exception of those made for the military, would only burn the naptha or raw gas. I bought a Thermos camp lantern (which I still have) because it would burn naptha, raw gas or even leaded gas.

Ah, yes ... for those carefree days of the 1950"s!

Dale

It was just a joke! I never bought a can of Coleman fuel in my life. And by changing the ignition timing, thos old cars ran just fine on unleaded, thank you. I was into the antique car hobby for over a decade before I moved on to Harley-Davidsons.

In your dreams ... if you retarded the spark enough to where those "old cars" would have ran on unleaded gas, their performance would have dropped like a rock. You better stick with fartin' around with those Harley-Davidsons!

Dale, what are you smokin'? By no or a slight ADVANCE of timing, you can EASILY tune these engines to burn the non-lead octane boosters (toluene, ethanol, methyl cyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) and ferosene) that substitute for lead. For high-compression engines like mine, I add up to 5% toluene to increase the octane of the Kalifornia 91 grade (ugggh!) premium fuel. Unocal's 100-octane race gas has almost 25% toluene. I guess your experience is from before lead gas was substituted. BTW, I'm an organic chemist.

Golly gee ... we should have had you around sooner ... and then there would have never been a need for leaded fuel! What a bunch of dummies we must have been! And here I was using hi-octane leaded in one of my old high compression engines of the past, because NOTHING short of that fuel would keep it's performance to the level it was designed for!

Could it have been that there were major technology changes for the automotive industry in order to accomadate the burning of non-leaded fuel?

Lead is a cheap and plentiful octane additive. The changes were to restrict performance, detune and lower compression ratios of the NEW technology engines. The older engines didn't need change, it was the other way around. Lead deposits foul catalytic convertors that remove HC, NO, CO. You can buy toluene at any chemical supply store. Octane during combustion is octane, lead or toluene or ethanol.