Your last generator Maintenance Run

[downsizingnow48]

At Mendocino we lost power for several hours in the evening and early night so ran the Honda 6500. High winds, limbs down all around. But PG&E has been doing court-supervised line maintenance for a couple years now and so we don't have the repeated and long lasting outages of years past.

 

[daugen]

8 feet of snow in parts of California, going to be folks out of power from that.

Yet down by the beach my sister is in a micro-climate and gets none of that. Her 22kw Generac
finally got installed there for almost five grand more than it should have cost. So much demand...
Forest fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, dam collapses, drought, unreliable power, drug gangs
I'm grateful to have none of that. Yet before it all slides into the sea, I'm hoping California sticks around long enough
for me to take an rv out there to visit my sister and both her sons and grandkids who live there. I told her I needed to get my
rv flameproofed before I brought it there...

I wonder if a lot of generators got clogged air filters from running in all that California and Washington smoke?
Normally they never seem to get dirty. Sounds like a good idea for folks in forest fire areas to have spare filter sets.

 

[3930dave]

I dosed my little Honda 1000 and decided to let it work...

Hoping for Miracle

Fingers crossed.

Wondering if agitation might help. Riding along in the work truck, if not already living there.......

If I ever get my hands on an ultrasonic cleaner large enough/carb small enough, I'll be tempted to throw a plugged-one in whole.....

Complete carbs are often low $ today, but I'd still be interested in that ^ lazy-dave test.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

8 feet of snow in parts of California, going to be folks out of power from that.

Yet down by the beach my sister is in a micro-climate and gets none of that. Her 22kw Generac
finally got installed there for almost five grand more than it should have cost. So much demand...
Forest fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, dam collapses, drought, unreliable power, drug gangs
I'm grateful to have none of that. Yet before it all slides into the sea, I'm hoping California sticks around long enough
for me to take an rv out there to visit my sister and both her sons and grandkids who live there. I told her I needed to get my
rv flameproofed before I brought it there...

I wonder if a lot of generators got clogged air filters from running in all that California and Washington smoke?
Normally they never seem to get dirty. Sounds like a good idea for folks in forest fire areas to have spare filter sets.

I remember a lot of years ago, reading about a commercial jet that had engines flame-out after unknowingly being flown through an ash-cloud at night. IIRC, pilot decided to put it into a dive, once he figured out the problem........ dice-roll worked, extra air speed cleaned the ash out fast.

Big fires can put a crazy amount of material into the air.....

Sign 'o Times...... when you need lawyers to keep the lights on in Cali via trimming..... but then again, they're also why the elective black-outs happen too......

Rgds, D.

 

[daugen]

headed out to shovel around generator which while I cleaned 8 inches of snow off it, didn't
clean up the area. Of course hoping for the big melt.
Well, it melted a little but another big layer coming tomorrow.

Next time I take snowblower out will go overland and make a path to gen. No IED's in the lawn there.
That path through the lawn will be my "maintenance run" of a different sort. If it's real cold next week
and the power goes out, I'm going to need to
haul gasoline over there anyway so time to make a path.

I was very surprised to see how little gas the new Ariens snowblower used, being EFI. Using an EFI
engine on a generator with a small portable tank would be a real bonus for run time apparently.
And why folks swear by the $4K+ Honda gens instead of swearing at them.

 

[RjCorazza]

I just serviced and fired up my 2 Yamaha inverter generators. 2000 and 3000 Watts. They were both getting hard to start, which is very unusual for them. Replacing the spark plugs did the trick.

 

[RjCorazza]

...
I was very surprised to see how little gas the new Ariens snowblower used, being EFI....

As much as I like my Ariens machine, it is not so easy on fuel. The small fuel tank doesn't help either. This is a non EFI engine, and doesn't start as simply (lots of steps), but it does start consistently.

 

[grsthegreat]

my ariens snowblower is 4 years old, non efi. starts great every year. use non ethanol fuel only.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Why can't the whole fuel industry be more tranparent and honest?

Friends in the small engine business are saying I should just buy that expensive fuel in the can that doesn't go bad. Fuel is expensive enough, but to spend several times that on this special fuel, is an assault on my sense of values. YET, considering the cost of repair, it's maybe money well spent.

 

[groundcover]

The small engine fuel is spendy but well worth it. I was able to find a non-ethanol source almost an hour away that I fill a half dozen cans a couple of times a year for my heavy consumption engines. All two stroke, all generators get SEF94.