Hi all. I have (perhaps foolishly) imported a brand new Coleman 639c. Coleman seems totally uninterested in selling their current production pressure lanterns (and stoves) in Australia, so I paid probably too much to have it shipped via eBay's global shipping program. I decided it was worth it because a) I wanted a bright lantern and b) I figured going forward there will be less and less opportunity to buy a brand new pressure lantern. Unfortunately things haven't gone smoothly. The lantern has arrived in good time from the US. Sadly the globe was smashed, although going by the reviews on Amazon this is not uncommon at all, they aren't well packaged and it appears they get smashed pretty regularly even when they aren't shipped across the Pacific. So I will have to gamble on having another globe shipped over and hope that one doesn't get broken either. But in the meantime to get it going I swapped in the straight wall globe from a spare 290 and for the first test I fitted a cheap butterfly 500cp mantle. It fired up ok but almost immediately it started popping/backfiring, sometimes quite rapidly. Additionally it was producing very strong kerosene fumes, so I suspected some sort of leak in the burner. Today after it cooled down I took it apart and found that sure enough there was a hole in the burner that had been torn when the burner was stamped out during manufacturing. I was able to close it up with some mig weld (I know its not pretty). I reassembled it and fired it back up, and at first I thought I was on to a winner. It ran great for a few minutes, but then it started with the popping again, and much more rapidly this time. However I did find that I have much finer control with the knob now and if I turn it back about 1/3 it does settle down and quit with the popping. Of course its much dimmer then which kind of defeats the point of having a big bright lantern. So my best theory is that the stamped burner is still leaking somewhere, so tomorrow I'll get some exhaust cement and try to seal all the seams on the burner and see if that helps. But if anyone as any other suggestions I'm all ears. Unfortunately I don't think its really practical at this point to send it back to Coleman for warranty.
In my opinion, it's better to obtain older lamps and lanterns etc., because the build quality is superior.
Howdy, what a bummer. Looks like your weld fell short of the split top right hand side ? Clean it up with a die grinder and do a air water test. Turn your welder up just a bit for more heat. Good luck, they don't make lanterns like they use to. Cheers Marko.
It may be possible once it’s warmed up to carefully take off the hood and with the lights out or in the dark look for the gas igniting/popping? hard to fathom why they sent it out like that?? hope you can get it running better regards pb
