Canadian vs American camping propane cylinders

[Elliott Wolin]

I purchased a propane-to-Lindahl converter on Ebay, like the one in the picture below (not the Lindahl-to-Lindahl adapter at the upper right).  It worked fine on my US propane cylinder.

I took it with me to the Canadian Rockies for use in car camping, as propane in the camping sized cylinders is way cheaper than iso/pro backpacking fuel in the cylinders w/Lindahl valves.  I bought a 1lb camping propane cylinder and two standard iso/pro cylinders at Cabela’s near the Calgary airport.

First night car camping I screwed it onto the Canadian propane cylinder, and … nothing.  I tried two backpacking stoves, no propane would come out of the Lindahl valve no matter what I did.  In the end we used iso/pro for all our cooking, and I gave the Canadian propane cylinder to a grateful guy with his kids in an RV.

When I got home I tried it again on my US propane cylinder, worked great.

What’s the difference?  Do Canadian propane cylinders need a longer stem?  Seems unlikely it was a bad cylinder, never happened to me before.  Any ideas?

[Greg F]

with a car camping stove so no adaptor both US and Canadian cylinders work fine.

im not sure if the 1lb cylinders have this but in Canada the 20lb cylinders have safety valves that if you open the valve without any back pressure it shuts the cylinder.

Otherwise I can’t think of anything that could be dofferent and have never ran into the problem myself over quite a few trips into the US

[Jerry Adams]

US 20 pound cylinders are the same – shutoff valve if the line breaks so there’s no back pressure

I have a weed flamer that connects directly to 20 pound cylinder.  There’s no regulator.  You have to open the cylinder valve slowly or the shutoff valve will trip.  Pressure gradually builds up in the flamer hose.

[Elliott Wolin]

I’m pretty sure the cylinder looked like the one below, it’s a photo from a Canadian supplier.  Since the general opinion is that there is no difference, either the cylinder really was bad, my adapter is bad but works on some cylinders, or I was spaced-out up there in Canada.

[Renais A]

I’ve used a number of Canadian-purchased cylinders with a couple of backpacking stoves with no problem.  Over the course of about 34 years using these cylinders I have come across 2 or maybe 3 bad cylinders.  Two of them were clearly full, and no fuel would come out.  One cylinder worked while the stove was on it, and failed to close once I took off the stove.  Nothing I could do would stop the propane from coming out, so I had to let it vent safely.  I’ve used a couple of the adapters before, and have had much less luck with them. Sometimes they function on one bottle and not on another, while a stove directly hooked up to the bottle would work.

[Jerry Adams]

I had a butane canister that wouldn’t close.  I just left the stove on until it was empty.

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