Coleman 8-Person Instant Tent

Deal Chatter Sports & Outdoors
2

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Coleman 8-Person Instant Tent
Price: $139.99
Shipping Options:: $6 Standard
Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days (Wednesday, Sep 12 to Monday, Sep 17) + transit
Condition: New

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3

I have one of these. The doors are strange flaps - 1 big pain in the rear vertical zipper, plus 2 along bottom of both doors. Result: frustration every time you get in or out. Never has it been a 1 handed, pull zipper down once and done operation, Instead you usually need 2 hands and/or 1 hands plus lots of back and forth as the slack in the fabric causes you to back up a bit and tug again, or to pull the silly weather guard out of it and retry.
The whole tent needs to be on a fairly flat surface too, as the middle poles won’t even REACH THE GROUND if one of the corners is on a lump. As nice as it is to set up, the bulk, size when packed, and difficult doors leave me wishing we had something else now.

4

I have lots of nights out in the woods while my two boys were in scouts. After they made Eagle and moved on, I found my self with LOTS of camping gear. Tents, ECWS sleeping bag systems, “gadgets”, etc. Some of this gear, I’ve re-purposed and use in my “go bags”. As for the tents, I have everything from a 4 season expedition tent to a big 12 person Coleman Rock Wall tent. And 4 more in between. What I’m seeing now is what I’m going to point out to people new to tents. If you buy one of these type tents (the kind with NO RAIN FLY), do your self a favor. Get a tarp that at least overlaps every side by 2 feet (and while you are at it, make sure it has the silver side so you can flip it up during summer). Though the prices don’t seem to be going down for large tents, they are cheeping out and excluding that extra layer of protection, the rainfly. A drizzle or light rain is fine. But I’ve seen north of $600 expedition tents leak like a cheese grater. I’ve camped out in everything from tropical heat to sub zero temps and have mostly used Coleman and Eureka tents (which is what the troop provides for the scouts) so I’m a little bias towards those two brands.

5

It’s not clear to me whether you actually own this model, but having weathered a couple of major, scary rainstorms in this same tent, I have to disagree with your advice concerning the tarp underneath. Having the tarp form a border like that is a great way to catch rain that will then run under the tent and stay there, between tarp and tent floor. Better to keep the tarp folded well within the footprint of the tent.

I know from reading the reviews over on Amazon that people report very different experiences about whether a rain fly is needed (at times it’s as if they’re writing about two completely different tents), but in my experience we had no leaks, without a fly.

One Achilles’ heel of the tent is the telescoping poles. After third use (the second time we’d had a major storm), we had a hard time folding the tent up again (the legs weren’t bending the way they were supposed to), and it was pretty much totaled. The shell is in good shape, but the frame is shot. I think there may have been too much twisting in the wind (so to speak). It’s hard/impossible to get replacement legs. So, for better or worse, I ended up buying a whole, new one in this sale.

6

Isn’t he talking about placing the tarp over the tent as an extra barrier with the silver side so it also reflects heat in summer?