MSR Stoves

Prompted by Bobskoot's post on his stove purchase, I thought that it would be useful to compare the two models I have. Let's see what thirty years of experience gets up.

The first one is the G/K model that I purchased in the late 1970's to replace a Primus white gas model that I used for years hiking in the mountains around Southern California. The Primus didn't have a pump and relied on heat from your hands warming up the fuel tank to generate pressure. Once it was primed and started, the heat from the flame would keep the tank pressurized. One of the problems is if the tank overheated, you would get a blowtorch from the pressure relief valve when it decided to vent. The MSR G/K had a pump, it came with two jets one for diesel/kerosene and the other for gasoline. Since I was starting to winter camp and looking forward to bicycle camping trips, this seemed to be the stove to get. I used it on many trips including winter climbing trips, bicycle camping trips and many car camping trips since. The built in spark ignition is very convenient as you don't even need to carry matches and being able to buy fuel at any filling station you come across was very convenient. Back in the early 80's on a bicycle trip to Cabo San Lucas, I filled it up at a gas station where fuel was 6¢ per gallon. The pump didn't even register a penny, I wasn't charged anything. This stove had the reputation of burning very hot and was pretty loud. It worked very well and came with this aluminum heat shield which is sturdier than it looks. On some backpacking trips, I would bring a steel wok and the heat shield was a perfect base for it and the stove was hotter than any home gas range I've ever used. The rigid pipe does make it a bit more difficult to pack and if you used diesel, there was a fair amount of soot. My carrying bag for the stove is pretty filthy inside.

The new stove is an MSR Whisperlite International that I picked up at REI on sale last December and is also multi-fuel meaning it'll run on just about anything that burns. It also came with a collection of jets for the different fuel options. It routes the fuel tube through the flame just as the older G/K version to vaporize the liquid fuel. More specifically, fuels like kerosene or diesel. The white gas version doesn't have or need the fuel line running through the flame. I am planning on using my old fuel bottle and was pleasantly surprised to see that the new stove works with my old pump which seems to fit better on the old fuel bottle anyway. Since the new pump is very light, and essentially packs inside the stove, I will probably bring it along as a spare. You would normally leave the pump attached to the bottle all the time as there is no reason to remove it. The newer version seems to have an extra fitting and an extra jet to burn bottled gas (isobutane I think) in addition to liquid fuels. This adds even more flexibility to an already good design. The one thing that I think I'll miss is the built in flint ignition. It packs small enough to fit inside of the non-stick pots that I have.

As you can see, the fuel lines on my bike are readily accessible and I can easily disconnect one to refil the MSR fuel bottle. No tools required, no fuel pump, just open the valve. The other side of the bike has the same fuel line layout. To me, that is the real attraction of the liquid fueled stoves. I do have a 1liter Sigg fuel bottle and if I can find a convenient way to carry it outside of my hard bags, I may use that one instead as I can probably get almost ten miles on that if I had to. The only reason I picked up a new stove was that replacement parts were getting hard to come by.

I'm starting to pull all of my gear together for the trip to see what I don't really need as I still think the list looked too long. With a compression stuff sack, one pannier will easily hold my sleeping bag, tent (without poles), ground cloth, small camping chair and rainsuit with still about 1/3 to 1/2 of the volume still available so I think that I'm in pretty good shape.