Your last generator Maintenance Run

[daugen]

I would add that I am confident the V twin Vanguard clone Generac in my 22kw gen would last more than 1000 hours.
Generac/Vanguard uses some seriously good oil rings in those engines, I have never seen the oil level go down.

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

The “EPA durability rating” is required to be shown on the engine label.

Manufacturers with higher ratings include this in their advertising, commercial models are typically minimum 1000 hrs or much more. Cheap stuff like Chinese trimmers are as low as 40 hrs.

 

[3930dave]

I would add that I am confident the V twin Vanguard clone Generac in my 22kw gen would last more than 1000 hours.
Generac/Vanguard uses some seriously good oil rings in those engines, I have never seen the oil level go down.

"Life" in this context means something different to the EPA, than most of us.

The last time I went looking online, these hour ratings were listed in Owner's Manuals. Champion today.... not so much. At a guess, those hour ratings were causing confusion at the consumer level. Or, perhaps the goal-posts were being moved often and randomly enough that OEMs gave up trying to keep the manuals up to date, and only focus on stickering the final product.....

Keep in mind, 10 y/o document.... but Table 2 lists the different hour levels, at least at that time......

View attachment EPA_small_engine_limits_SORE_white_paper_0109_FINAL.pdf

As I understand it, the OEM picked what hour category they wanted to certify for. Testing costs money, so while you may be able to draw some conclusions from a higher-hour rating, it is entirely possible that an OEM picked a lower hour category for a consumer product, knowing that few customers pay attention anyway.

Given basic maintenance (which a guy like you d, greatly surpasses), would a "1000" hour motor self-destruct at 1000.00001 hours ? About as likely as winning a major lottery......

Even if at 1000 hours, it went through an extra ounce or 2 of oil and 1 or 3 more gallons of gas on a multi-day outage, how many of us would deem that a "problem" ? Cue sound of crickets here.......

As a relative pseudo-yardstick though, it would be nicer if those hour ratings were more prominently listed online for consumer products......

Rgds, D.

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

The intent of pointing out the life rating is that everyone is looking for a relative comparison of quality. This is a somewhat standardized rating system and gives and overall quality rating though there is always something lacking, if a manufacturer puts the effort in here, it is likely , though not guaranteed they have put some more effort in elsewhere.

 

[3930dave]

The intent of pointing out the life rating is that everyone is looking for a relative comparison of quality. This is a somewhat standardized rating system and gives and overall quality rating though there is always something lacking, if a manufacturer puts the effort in here, it is likely , though not guaranteed they have put some more effort in elsewhere.

Some value there, yes. But, I take some official "certifications" with a grain of salt..... over time, many industries have been able to self-certify to a large extent, with little or no field oversight/follow up.

"Life" rating is one datapoint, but I pay more attention to examples like you cited of recent product high-hour commercial use. If we could look up the Life rating of the old Coleman grs is talking about, we'd probably find that it was officially Dead 15 years ago.....

Rgds, D.

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

I agree, the problem is the majority of that data is anecdotal just as the example I gave were.

Most people only own one or two units in a lifetime and people who work on them usually specialize in only a few brands at most like my experience. So that too comes with a grain of salt.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I should have attended to my batteries. Power didn't as much as flicker in over a year and that breeds complacency I guess. Now off, three times in a week, It went out a 2:30 am. I THOUGHT, No Big Deal.

Then at 3:30, the Freezer went from -18c into alarm at -10c. Alarm keypad was announcing "ALARM" and was locked up for some reason, maybe with AC failure. Shut off whole system.

Then monitoring station starts calling me about my alarms and other properties for AC loss. I couldn't sleep at 4:00, so I thought, what the heck, start the generator.

Onan 7.5 1800 rpm Diesel. Battery DEAD. Wheeled Yanmar 3.7 air cooled over and tried using that battery but it was too small, and I discovered later, a battery connection (Wing Nut) was loose on the main set. Then tried running a booster/charger running off the Yanmar to start the Onan. Man that Yanmar makes some ugly smoke in a closed garage! And Noise! I could not hear the Onan starter. Anyway, finally got the Onan running and everything back on line. Maybe fifteen minutes tops.

An hour later the power came back on. Should have just stayed in bed. And that's the thing, you never know how long the power will be out. And why I hated a PTO set. I looked at an outage map, and there was one tiny little dot in the middle of the whole province, which was us! 80 customers out. It was snowing quite hard and I thought maybe, the crews would just wait til daylight.

Once again I was very happy to have my 12 volt lighting in the garage, left over from days whenI had to mess with a PTO generator and jumper cables into the splitter box. It runs off my alarm system battery and has a clockwork timer so I can't depleat my battery by accident and a flashing Green LED light so you can find the knob in the dark. Beats working with a portable light all to heck.

12 Volt Florescent

Control plus Hydro (Utility) Restoral alarm Panel.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

have the longest EPA engine life ratings in the industry.

this sure caught my eye. Where does one find this information?

from my reading it appears there are 300 hour engines, the disposable non rebuildable low end stuff,
thousand hour rated/marketed engines, and then ?. The latter being the Kawasaki's, Hondas, Yamaha's, etc.
Maybe even Subaru in the last batch except
they got out of the small engine business recently.

Yamaha bought a couple of the bigger Subaru tooling ect. and is making those engines.

The rest of the line was sold to a Chinese company and they will be built in china and sold as Subaru's...

SR

 

[3930dave]

I agree, the problem is the majority of that data is anecdotal just as the example I gave were.

Most people only own one or two units in a lifetime and people who work on them usually specialize in only a few brands at most like my experience. So that too comes with a grain of salt.

So long as you can make use of it, More Data = Better ! Part of why I hang out on TBN in general, and this thread in particular :thumbsup:

Yamaha is a relevant example. I know their street and off-road bikes a bit, but their gens are rather rare to find in the wild, at least up here. I expect good things from Y, and so far the comments from yourself and a few others on here have matched up. IIRC, I think it was Copperhead that did a nice install of one, in his OTR truck, for shore-power.....

Thanks to this thread, I'm daydreaming about a surplus MEP as a retirement project, but I've already got a few other projects ahead of it..... :blacksmith::wizard::jester:

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I should have attended to my batteries. Power didn't as much as flicker in over a year and that breeds complacency I guess. Now off, three times in a week, It went out a 2:30 am. I THOUGHT, No Big Deal.

Then at 3:30, the Freezer went from -18c into alarm at -10c. Alarm keypad was announcing "ALARM" and was locked up for some reason, maybe with AC failure. Shut off whole system.

Then monitoring station starts calling me about my alarms and other properties for AC loss. I couldn't sleep at 4:00, so I thought, what the heck, start the generator.

Onan 7.5 1800 rpm Diesel. Battery DEAD. Wheeled Yanmar 3.7 air cooled over and tried using that battery but it was too small, and I discovered later, a battery connection (Wing Nut) was loose on the main set. Then tried running a booster/charger running off the Yanmar to start the Onan. Man that Yanmar makes some ugly smoke in a closed garage! And Noise! I could not hear the Onan starter. Anyway, finally got the Onan running and everything back on line. Maybe fifteen minutes tops.

An hour later the power came back on. Should have just stayed in bed. And that's the thing, you never know how long the power will be out. And why I hated a PTO set. I looked at an outage map, and there was one tiny little dot in the middle of the whole province, which was us! 80 customers out. It was snowing quite hard and I thought maybe, the crews would just wait til daylight.

Once again I was very happy to have my 12 volt lighting in the garage, left over from days whenI had to mess with a PTO generator and jumper cables into the splitter box. It runs off my alarm system battery and has a clockwork timer so I can't depleat my battery by accident and a flashing Green LED light so you can find the knob in the dark. Beats working with a portable light all to heck.

View attachment 596334 12 Volt Florescent

View attachment 596335 Control plus Hydro (Utility) Restoral alarm Panel.

You know..... Hydro (elec utlility for non-Canucks) operators have lots of time on their hands...... your posts on here about lack of outages are public..... they are just helping with the testing

Perhaps you need to trade away an extra gen for a pile of batteries ? :drink:

Dark..... need to persuade something to start....... I picked up one of these recently:

https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-Professional-Headlight-Batteries-Included/dp/B0018KS364/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Energizer+Hard+Case+Professional+3+LED+Headlight&qid=1552858357&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

Rugged and runs on AA, two of my priorities for a work light. Liking the dual lens (spot, flood)..... flood will light up a huge area - I tend to want spot mostly, but flood worked really well the other weekend.... I was finishing up something in the fading light of day; the flood setting was exactly what I needed, working on the top of a ladder. Separate switches for each lens, so you have independent Hi/Lo setting for each one. NO BLINKING FLASH FUNCTION ! :thumbsup:

My FIL has an old 12v lighting setup in his house, nice way to have backup lighting.....

Rgds, D.