Your last generator Maintenance Run

[daugen]

Last night, someone hit pole a few miles up the road. Power out for about 4 hours. Have Sams Club Blackmax 8000 watt that is 9 years old. 13hp Honda, I start when needed. Has always started with little to no maintenance, guess I am lucky. I may pull out and run engine with small load a few times per year. Ran everything in home that was needed except heat pump. My spouse has 12,000 BTU in master bed that runs 24 hours a day, 365 days per year due to health issues.

Eddie

Eddie, if that's a GX390 in there, the alternator will likely wear out way sooner than that marvelous engine. Get it hot and if the gas is kinda old, I'd dump it and start over again. But if it ran for four hours under load just fine, sounds like a seafoam special :thumbsup:

 

[3930dave]

Last night, someone hit pole a few miles up the road. Power out for about 4 hours. Have Sams Club Blackmax 8000 watt that is 9 years old. 13hp Honda, I start when needed. Has always started with little to no maintenance, guess I am lucky. I may pull out and run engine with small load a few times per year. Ran everything in home that was needed except heat pump. My spouse has 12,000 BTU in master bed that runs 24 hours a day, 365 days per year due to health issues.

Eddie

Even w/o a medical consideration, your Summer weather would be tough with the power out. Honda makes a great engine, but depending what your region's fuel is like, even they can get mucked up to the point of not running.

As daugen hit on, a dose of Seafoam is a great preventative cleaner, and also is a fuel stabilizer too....

Funny, we think of Winter up here as a critical season for power (and it is....) but many of our last big outages (fortunately not that often, knock wood....) have been in the Summer.....

Rgds, D.

 

[daugen]

Yes, when it's 90 and 90 here, good hot coastal humid weather, the idea of
trying to sleep in that after a long day with a bedroom in the 80's, with fans roaring, well, no thank you.
Plus in a week I bet the mold would be over everything. Getting rid of the moisture is really important, says the guy who spent five figures
de-molding my home when I bought it. Mold was in between the boards in the floor. Yuk. I had to rip out/recover 100% of my first floor flooring all due to moisture damage.
Solid wood floors had literally buckled. Wrong choice of flooring, need the engineered stuff here as it doesn't swell like solid wood. All of which was an expensive education and why the a/c
has to run here in the summer. 200 years ago I guess with all the windows open it worked but if I ever get in a time machine and go backwards, it won't be in the summer.

I got my first standby gen when my late wife first got sick. On the second one now, which reminds me that I have to look at the label on my Generac
to see when it was last
done. Use a label gun saying something like 10/30 syn filt June 2017
If I see it doesn't say plug, then the next annual service I change the plugs.
Everything always looks like new, the oil doesn't get dirty, even running every week for test.
One of those engines I have to constantly check the oil twice because it's hard to see on the stick.

 

[daugen]

I have a question for this group. When changing a gen's oil, if there is an oil filter, one normally changes that
at the same time, get the accumulated crud out of the system.
But what if there is no crud, as on my perfectly clean Generac(Vanguard) air filter?
I'm sure not changing that filter out every year if it looks like new. My spare on the shelf gets more dust and dirt
than the one in the motor.
But at some point, filter material I suppose degrades over time.
How many years can one leave a modern air filter in a generator and if clean, know it will not decompose or otherwise
fail?

Somewhere between the three and five year mark I change a perfectly clean paper air filter and I always wonder if I'm just adding
to the landfill unnecessarily. And why spend money you don't have to, when the part still works. Of course, my spare is also degrading
on my shelf too...

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I change the oil filt every time I change the oil, USUALLY once a year, in a low hour motor...

I don't change air filters until they are either dirty or for some reason they are starting to go bad...and that could be years.

SR

 

[3930dave]

I have a question for this group. When changing a gen's oil, if there is an oil filter, one normally changes that
at the same time, get the accumulated crud out of the system.
But what if there is no crud, as on my perfectly clean Generac(Vanguard) air filter?
I'm sure not changing that filter out every year if it looks like new. My spare on the shelf gets more dust and dirt
than the one in the motor.
But at some point, filter material I suppose degrades over time.
How many years can one leave a modern air filter in a generator and if clean, know it will not decompose or otherwise
fail?

Somewhere between the three and five year mark I change a perfectly clean paper air filter and I always wonder if I'm just adding
to the landfill unnecessarily. And why spend money you don't have to, when the part still works. Of course, my spare is also degrading
on my shelf too...

Years ago (when everything was still carb'd), the quick-lube I used in the Winter had a light mounted on the customer counter to show the difference between new and old air filters. Still today, I pretty much always go by visual (ie held up to sunlight or a strong lamp source) - if new doesn't look that much different than old, I keep running the old air filter.

There are many variables with air filters - a portable gen always used on construction sites is probably going to load up much faster than one installed in a dedicated shelter at home.

Kept away from sunlight and water (OK, and mice ) , I'd expect air filters to have a pretty long operational or shelf-life.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Use a label gun saying something like 10/30 syn filt June 2017
If I see it doesn't say plug, then the next annual service I change the plugs.

I'm old enough to have used the olde Dymo label makers....

Today, I use a Ptouch. The labels seem to stand up well, even under-hood. I generally keep Service notes elsewhere for most things, but I find it convenient to have labels directly on machinery - esp. stuff that I don't use all the time....

Rgds, D.

 

[MAN IN BLACK]

Each Wednesday afternoon at 2pm for 30 minutes.
Automatic transfers and start...80kw on a 150hp John Deere engine.
Good to power 2 layers barns and a pullet barn on our poultry farm.
Hydro goes out for more than 30 seconds...generator kicks in.

 

[buickanddeere]

Each Wednesday afternoon at 2pm for 30 minutes.
Automatic transfers and start...80kw on a 150hp John Deere engine.
Good to power 2 layers barns and a pullet barn on our poultry farm.
Hydro goes out for more than 30 seconds...generator kicks in.

If you say "Hydro" you may confuse the Americans.

 

[daugen]

If you say "Hydro" you may confuse the Americans.

splish splash I was taking a bath....

I think in Canada "Hydro" is just another name for the electric company

Probably the best form of power generation man has ever come up with. And in some ways the simplest.