Naptha?

Try Sports Chalet:

They have quarts of Coleman fuel for $7. Click "Find In Store" on the right. I don't know where you are in CA, but they have stores all around the S.F. area.

Good luck.

I thought that was Stage 4? Man, you're FAST!

Is that the one with six wide-open screws holding it down, and nothing is routed over the top of it?

-- Never underestimate the innate animosity of inanimate objects. --anon

Doesn't anyone realize that he is in California and that the stores in California can not carry a lot of things that are available in the rest of the country. Like TSP is not available in New York State. You can buy boxes of stuff labeled TSP, but when you look at the contents it is sodium carbonate.

There is no point in suggesting stores that carry Coleman fuel in your area. He is in California.

Dan

Nup. I was diagnosed at Stage 6 three years and four months ago. Saturday February 2nd 2008.

No such luck. The good news is that the cover is fixed using the four 30 mm spark plug tube nuts. The bad news is that the breather tubes were oxidized, making extraction difficult, and there are a couple brackets and Cali emissions cables that have to be disassembled to allow clearance for the cover to be lifted off. The procedure in my Haynes manual didn't mention the interfering parts. I spent a *lot* of time disassembling

*this* so I could access the fasteners to disassemble *that*.

Never happened to you, I assume? :)

I tried downloading a video of the process three times but YouTube choked. They were prolly demonstrating it on a car without the interfering emissions parts anyway.

Don't get me wrong. The weather was very pleasant and it felt good to be doing something useful, so it was hardly upsetting.

Au contrare. :)

--Winston

OK. Thanks Karl

--Winston

(...)

Steve says SC has Coleman fuel! I will cruise out there and have a look. (Preparing for the shoulder shrug and "I dunno the *computer* says we have four bottles.")

:)

Thanks, Ed.

--Winston

Yeah, he says somebody called before I talked to him. I figured it was you. I didn't reach him the first time I called, but someone in another department told me he'd just walked by it so I was sure enough to post the info.

Better hurry -- now he thinks there's a run on it. d8-)

BTW, Coleman tells me it's the same all over. In most parts of the country, customers have switched to propane, so there are a lot of retailers who aren't stocking it anymore.

Sears, K-Mart, and Target seem to be the best bets, on a national average, anyway. So says Coleman. But they don't make it or inventory it themselves, so they don't have a lot of information.

I checked before sending Winston on a wild-goose chase. They have four quart bottles of it in the San Jose store, for example.

There is no law against selling it in CA, which makes sense, because they sell gasoline. I checked the law, too.

Apparently it's a matter of what customers are buying, and, thus, what retailers are stocking. Coleman tells me that it's hard to find in many parts of the country because customers have switched to propane.

BTW, in NJ, I just bought a box of TSP a few days ago.

(...)

Man! That was *above and beyond* helpful!

Thanks again, Ed!

--Winston

It's a natural for an old reporter. If a problem hangs around for a few days without an answer, there may be a story in it. It gnaws at me until I have an answer.

You may not remember why I came to this NG in the first place. It was around '02. I was writing for (then) _Machine Shop Guide_, and I was having a hard time, working at home, coming up with enough items for my monthly Tooling column. I needed four or five every month. So I just lurked here and watched what people were talking about -- they actually talked about machining in those days. I'd usually get at least one item per month that way. Sometimes two or three.

I also found Dobie Dave and Hamei, both of whom became interview subjects for full-length articles.

It's a habit of mind. All reporters have some degree of it, or they don't continue to pursue that line of work.

One of them 'pearl' metaphors, no doubt. :)

I like to think that manufacturers lurk on RCM for product ideas, too.

Cool!

Your investigation reaped huge rewards for me.

I didn't find the quarts for $6.97 but I did find GALLONS for sale at $10.97!

I latched on to a gallon and didn't let it leave my sight. Their SKU 0121860019. I didn't find it on their website so I figure it's a 'store only' deal.

I cannot believe how cool this is! Somebody, pinch me!

Thanks, Ed. You are the Best!

--Winston

My favorite find at Sears is "2 cycle Lawnmower fuel" at $5 - A QUART! Somebody got a promotion for that one!

You're certainly welcome. That's two good deeds for me today. One more, and I get a gold star on my forehead, like Sister Maria used to give me!

The other deed was that I pointed out to my neighbor, who was trying to drill a hole in his pressure-treated deck by creating smoke with his cordless drill, that he probably had it running in reverse. He did. d8-)

Try Wal-Mart. Last year I got a gallon there. (only to find that the little mom and pop grocer down the street from me had couple of old cans on the shelf for $3 gal less.)

Roger Shoaf

(...)

Here ya go. One USENET gold star. Value: Two attaboys

That is *much* funnier when it happens to someone else.....

:)

--Winston

Shazaam! So have you called the guys back and thumbed your nose at them yet?

I loved having to remove the air conditioning pump and bracket, separately, including losing the freon, to get at rocker gaskets. Flat rate was SIX HOURS. Chebby or Cad, IIRC. Effin' GMs...

And don't forget the six hour engine R&R to change a set of spark plugs in a 260/289cid V-8 Mustang. Guys were cutting 2" holes in the unibody fender wells to get at them. R&R front wheels, cut holes once, and do tune-ups in an hour from then on. Body shops loved it because when you even -tapped- a Mustang after that, it ripped the front end off. ;)

Nah! Never once, with all that wonderful German, Austrian, Italian, French, American, English, Japanese, and Yugoslavian engineering.

Condolences. What was I saying? Oh, "never underestimate..."

Forgot the "i" in contraire, mon frere. I enjoyed today's 78F with a mostly clear cloud-sprinkled sky.

-- The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. --Herbert Spencer

Don't have to. (Hi Ali, you sick piece of crap.)

Ah where was I.... :)

(...)

Gaaa!

Whoops.

(...)

Pardon my French.

It's good to be King.

--Winston

TRS Recovery isn't part of the TRS credit reporting folks? I didn't check into it. Hmm, the trio is Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. I thought TRS was in there somewhere.

(...)

Nah. Nothing legit about them.

--Winston