Starting 6-1-17 Champion 7000 watt RUNNING, 9000 surge, DUEL FUEL gen on sale 550.00 after rebate/discount.. Electric start w/ battery & power cord.. Just thought everyone would like to know..
That sounds pretty good I'll have to take a look, thanks for the heads up!
Made in China?
https://m.costco.com/Champion-7000W...erator-wElectric-Start.product.100220385.html
yep.... what isn't.... A friend of mine has been using these champion gensets... the good thing about getting them from costco is they just get another one every few months fairly hassle free
I work on gensets as my business. For portables of this type, your options if you want it to run are 1. Honda 2. Honda 3. Honda Everything else is, well...everything else. I know "a few" people who have gotten good service out of Champions and the like. I know a lot who have had a rod thrown or some other terrible thing happen. That has never happened to a Honda on my watch. If you can't afford a new Honda, get a used one on Craigslist. Even with loads of owner abuse, it is still better than a new off brand.
^^ well said Birken Of course as much as I like honda's I actually will usually go cheap and buy something else... to work on...
I have a DeVilbis 5250 running watt w/ a 10hp Tecum. engine I have about 10 years on it.. just converted it to electric start this year.. I paid 2 or 300.00 for it 10 years ago & 100.00 to convert it.. & got it 2nd hand..lol I use the heck outta it for days & weeks at a time, SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR.. Good thing the low oil shut down works on it cuz she'll use some oil.. when it shuts down for low oil its time to refill w/ gas, 9 hrs.. funny how it works out like that.. I "suicide plug" it thru the dryer connection & it runs my whole house.. I always turn off the water heater & the A/C tho.. {and yes.. the main outside breaker, like you have to mention that.. duh} Now I DONT wanna start a pizzin contest.. I JUST wanted to share MY experience w/ an off brand unit.. I KNOW its not the "norm" & I'm very lucky..
I am not a fan of Tecumseh engines either. But they seemed to be built to at least a thousand hours and not throw a rod. The Chinese engines seem have problems with weak rods, valve train parts, insufficient bearing clearances and oiling. Take your pick, any one of those will turn an engine into a hunk of scrap metal right quick. Tecumseh and B&S engines will not run a whole long time but they will generally fail gradually and gracefully, losing power and compression, burning more oil, giving you warning and time to get a replacement. The Chinese stuff likes to fail with a loud clank and no prior warning. Also, Chinese watts seem smaller than our watts. Sometimes they won't pull rated power even when new.
Honda is one of the best. If it won't start and run after 2 pulls of the cord, there's something wrong. Some Wacker stuff in our fleet have Subaru gas engines and they seem to be fairly decent as well. On a side note, someone told me that the Honda gas engines with the red covers/shrouding are genuine Japanese Hondas, while the black ones are a cheap Chinese version. That true or is it BS?
I DO AGREE w/ the Honda engine.. I have a pressure washer about 10 yrs old.. it sat in the old shed & got fired up once a year w/ OLD GAS.. 2nd pull it would start.. if it ran crappy, just add fresh gas to the old.. Lol WHY cant every manuf. do that?? Well, I guess they COULD.. its just a matter of "cost" vs profit...
I've seen black hondas that were made in Thailand, otherwise they seem to be the identical to the red hondas. Of course the Harbor freight version has most parts that swap also, so the parts compatibility doesn't mean much. I don't use them enough to know how they hold up relatively. I've had good luck with the B&S vanguard engines too, briggs has always made "industrial" engines with cast iron sleeves and better parts that held up much better than the cheaper ones.
Beware of mergers and acquisitions. If a generator has the name of a trusted US company, it means nothing after a merger. Just a decal to paste on a Chinese generator. For new generators I agree about Hondas. They aren't perfect either though, as some are not 100% reliable in cold weather. Yamahas are almost as good as Hondas. Even Honda is getting a lot of parts made in China and camshafts are plastic on some models. Personally, I prefer an early 80's horizontally opposed 1800 RPM Onan.
I don't know about the Chinese vs other countries Hondas, but I can say that I have been very disappointed with the Subaru/Robin engines I have seen. Stupid things like oil leaks impossible to fix without splitting the case and all the bolts are tight. Rocker studs backing out. Yeah, and try starting a Honda and leave the choke closed. It will putt away at reduced speed and black smoke but almost never flood out or die. Just keeps patiently choking along waiting for you to unchoke it. Even the Chinese clones which look identical in the carburetor and everywhere won't do that. I have heard the Vanguard engines are pretty good but not enough experience to tell. I have fixed a few Yamahas and I was not impressed with the electric part of them. Seemed as cheap and cheesy as the Chinese junk. I have seen the Honda plastic cam shaft but I had the case split to fish out a broken dipstick, the engine had a zillion hours on it and the valve lash was still more or less correct so can't complain. I did replace the timing belt when I was in there, it was loose and sloppy, runs in engine oil but even though they use cheap parts, they must be the "right" cheap parts. As for the 1800 RPM Onan, big and heavy and fuel pigs and don't really run much longer than a Honda engine-wise but I guess they have their good points. The commutator brushes and ignition points are high wear items.
The good points: They last over 6000 hours. Most have been removed from RV's and only have a few hundred hours on them. A used Onan costs 1/6 as much as a used Honda. I can easily and cheaply repair them in the field. They are almost as quiet as a Honda. Post merger (mid eighties) Onans are not worth spit though, they are in the same class as any Chinese generator.
I haven't seen one last 6000 hours. If they make it to 5000 they are leaking, oil burning, low compression, fuel eating pigs. It could be possible for them to go farther, maybe it is owner neglect, I don't see why there is any major flaw in the design, just stating my experience and I work on a lot of them, or used to until they got replaced with something more stout. I will agree they are great for an RV but for prime power I wouldn't even consider it. Onan/Cummins still made them into the early 2000s, and they weren't much better or worse...just different sets of problems due to different design changes...still way ahead of the belt drive V-twins that replaced them in the mid 2000s. Except for the flat head fuel consumption issues.
What's more stout? Unless you go with a larger KW unit like Lima or Kato, there isn't much out there under 7.5KW. All the horizontally opposed Onans leaked at the oil filter base until you tightened them once, otherwise no leaks. Take good care of them (which is easy because they're user friendly) they last a long time. The later ones of that design had electronics so I stayed away from them. All flatheads are low compression ratio, but never had problems with loss of compression on the old Onans. Fuel consumption on a 6.5 K I had was .7 GPH, the 5KW around a half gallon. OK Honda is better in that regard. I lived 15 years off grid so I do have experience with generators.
Yes, you are absolutely right there is not anything that small. The way off grid systems are going these days though they get larger and larger anyway. So larger generators are the norm now. Of course diesel is perfect if you can swing it or talk the customer into it. The little 3 cylinder Isuzu/Perkins/Yanmar/etc are great for off grid, they run years with gross neglect and keep on ticking. Except for the terrible vibration a 3 cylinder generates. My colleague and I like to joke that you will show up for some unknown problem and all the external parts will be laying on the floor but the engine will still be running like nothing had happened. For gas (vapor) engines we search around for good used water cooled units in the 10-15 kw range that have an engine you can still get parts for. Also the Lister-powered Onans were popular for a short time. They had some interesting issues though. But mostly pretty stout. Parts are getting more scarce now. I do have one customer who has a two-cylinder vapor Lister/Onan/Cummins from the mid 2000s, only one I have ever seen or even heard of, 6.3 KW IIRC but I think it was not really beta tested well, 2 vertical pistons going the same direction and some huge crank counterweights on the crank and the thing still shakes like a paint mixer, makes a diesel 3 look smooth by comparison.
Somewhat off topic, but not that far. So if you're not going to go to four cylinder four cycle, or a 2-71 Detroit, are you better off staying with a single cylinder for small engines for reliability? or does all that shaking not make much difference to the engine? Is a V twin or horizontally opposed much different?
I never ran across any used ones other than Kubotas with electronics and many of them high RPM. I still have an old 2 cyl Lister ST with a Lima-Mac generator. It was a basket case and I built this skid for it. Helluva lotta weight for a 14 horse powerplant. It gets .4 GPH at full load. Noisy as hell. They weren't particularly well designed but they were way overbuilt and known to go up to 40,000 hours before the first overhaul. View attachment 170217 View attachment 170217
A horizontally opposed 2 cylinder is much smoother than an inline 2 cylinder. talking gas engines here, that's why the opposed Onans quickly overtook the inline Wisconsins back in those days. One thing to consider is crankcase pressure, too. If you have two pistons on downstroke at the same time, oil is getting pressurized. But there is little available in small diesel engines. I would stay away from any that run faster than 1800 RPM.
I have a customer with one of those, have not seen it run yet. It is mounted way above the fuel tank and had all kind of air leaks. It is the backup to the backup which is a 3.9 turbo John Deere Kohler set and he also has commercial power. Way in the boondocks though. It did try to fire when I was there but then ran out of fuel and we determined to fix it when we had more time later this year. What are you trying to power? It makes all the difference. The shaking does not really bother the engines it seems. They are pretty vibration proof. It is everything they attach to the engine that shakes off. Gauges and accessories. "They say" that the current 2 cylinder Perkins and Kubota will run as long at 3600 as at 1800 but I am too nervous to try.
I observed the high RPM transition on gasoline generators back in the eighties. There are two distinct advantages to high RPM in generators. 1) Momentum. They don't bog down as much when you slam a big load to them. 2) Manufacturers can produce generators that produce nearly twice the KW of previous models at no extra cost to them. This was a no-brainer at business meetings, but experience has proven that they get twice the KW at the expense of lifespan, noise and fuel economy. They have a motive to lie.