On The Bench: Coleman Model 16 Gas Radiant heater up and running (Part 3)

This is an amazingly well designed heater. Big tank, lots of heat, compact size, easy to use, onboard pump storage, dead simple construction. I have a couple of these and absolutely love them. Because they are radiant heaters, they really throw the heat. You are one hundred percent correct about the damn radiants, though. When I was more active in working on this stuff, I was constantly scouring the interwebs for the correct radiants or a single radiant block to replace/substitute the originals when life got busy for me. I'm convinced that if I had started looking 5 years earlier, I could have cornered the Coleman radiant market. Haha! Oh well. Enjoy this beauty and thanks for posting the light up. For those wondering, the entire radiant area WILL glow a beautiful orange/red hot that can be felt well over 10 feet away. If you stand with your heels a couple inches away from it, you will burn your pants rather quickly. What can I say, it was a new years party and well, I may have underestimated the power of this unit, given my blood alcohol level and all. On the other hand, the back just gets warm, so you can safely put it pretty close to walls. Just don't run it unattended. It IS a gasoline powered appliance. If your flames have any yellow at all, don't use them indoors and get it fixed before you do. While mine produced no CO once they were warmed up, don't take that as a rule. If you work with a lot of this kind of stuff indoors, get a CO detector. They aren't that expensive and can save your life. I use, service, and sell gas monitors daily as part of my job. Let me know if you have any questions.

Nice heater. This summer I picked up a model 17 Coleman radiant heater at a garage sale. It looks identical to yours except it burns Kerosene. My understanding is the US market burned gasoline and the UK and all of its colonies used kerosene. Mine is in about the same very good condition as yours with almost all of the paint and finish intact. It’s complete with all radiants, the original paper manual printed in 1939, and the odd little fuel can to fill the preheat burner. On my heater, the front little pre heater for the generator has a small “well” at each end, lined with what appears to be cotton batting. You use the odd little gas can with the curved spout to fill those two wells with denatured alcohol, which I couldn’t find locally so I’ve used methyl hydrate. You light that generator burner heater and wait five minutes for the generator to be up to temperature. Then open the valves and away it goes. Mine would light but run poorly, so I removed the nozzle and generator tube and soaked them in carb cleaner. Now it lights perfectly, nice and even flame and sound. The only issue left is the tank valve with the black knob, I get a drop every few hours from the packing, and I hate leaks and smelly kerosine. I tightened the packing nut as much as I dare and it’s still has a slow leak. Have you had those packings apart, any idea where to get a replacement, or any ideas on how to rejuvenate it so it can seal again? Thanks for sharing your heater with us. I didn’t think I’d ever see another one, especially intact and working.