Last night power went out so we decided to hook up the portable generator, 10K Generac, it came with my new wife about 25 years ago! Dumped a couple gallons of fresh gas in checked oil and fired it up. It ran great till we were going to bed. I went out and rolled it into the garage and shut it off. In the mean time wife went down to the breaker panel and filliped main breaker back on assuming the power would be back on when we got up. I believe power did finally come back on around 3 AM. After breakfast decided I'd roll the generator back to the barn we keep it in and maybe dump a couple gallons of gas in to be ready it power went out again. Well knew something was not right as soon as I opened the garage door. Very smoky and knew that I had made a major mistake. See when I shut down generator I never unplugged the 220 volt cord to the receptacle in the garage! After unplugging way to late I did hit the starter to see if it would even turn over. Well it did start but also was spitting a bunch of copper wire bits out of the vents on the generator! Did call the local Generac dealer and at least the guy was nice and did not tell me how dumb a thing I had done. So sometime Tuesday I'm going to be hauling it over to the dealer to see if there might be any repair possible. Sad thing is in the 25 years it has been here it has probably been used a dozen or maybe less times and other than a little dust on it it looks almost like new. All I would have needed to do was trip the breaker to the outlet or unplug the cord and nothing would have happened. Not even sure if repair parts are available for this old a genset from Generac.
This is why you never use suicide cords. Even people who should know what they are doing make mistakes sometimes. Parts will not be available and even if they were, far too expensive.
I'm kind of thinking that will be the case but still want to see what the guy says in the morning. Would like to find someone who forgot to add oil and seized up their engine. Either to get parts to fix mine or find someone who will buy mine!
These things are purely disposable and parts did not stay the same year over year so chance of finding something similar is very low. Also it is a large unit which makes it a less popular model. And they did not sell that many portables back in that era so population is probably very small. Like trying to fix a Yugo, if it works run it, if it breaks onto something better
Would the engine be alright on a log spliter or some other stationary engine use around your home?
Glad to here I am not alone. I get most things used. Even have a used wife. Have had a couple of generator failures. Weld and gen. units. The engine failed on one and the gen on the other. Those engines had tapered crankshaft ends. They were older and the engine was not available for one and the armature for the other. If yours has a strait crankshaft you can use it for something.
Well sofar from what I've read I'm thinking the end of crank is tapered for the generator mount. Also learned this morning that this generator despite all the marking on it saying Generac is just a renamed Briggs Generator. The local dealer had to contact Generac to find that out! Right now we are seriously thinking about getting a hardwired pad mounted propane fueled generator. As I'm getting close to 75 (April) thinking it might be the way to go. Because if I was down for a few days from something wife might not be able to drag out a portable generator and get it hooked up on a bad winter night. Guy is coming out first of the week to check out our house and land to give an estimate.
When we built our house a couple years ago I had the pad poured, gas line run and transfer switch installed. I stuck to my budget and was a tad shy of the $ to install the generator. I’ll probably get it done this year. I wanted something the wife didn’t have to touch if we had a failure. She works from home so it would be nice if we had some bad weather. In 2 years we’ve had maybe 4 hours without power but days without internet lol.
Don't do it Hansen! Get a used light plant like I did. 7.5 KW diesel with a Kubota engine.
Three freezers, two fridges, electric stove and hot water heat, 7500 watts is too light for us. When I do our standby, it's going to be a 16Kw liquid cooled. Plus, my FIL lives next door, I'm going to set it up so I can run his fridge/freezer/furnace as well.
I agree with both of the last 2 posts. 3 cyl light plant if it is all you need for power. Otherwise 4 cylinder 2 liter whatever if you have real loads that need to run. Unfortunately all the good 4 cylinder stuff is too spendy these days. But Hansen might know where to hunt, it only takes 1.
FFS. I haven't looked in a couple years, when we got a 22k liquid cooled for the fire department like 5 years ago, the generator was $7000. Apparently now they're $11k.
Yeah I paid under $4k for my 20k towable about 10 years ago. Seller had it for 6 and I let him stew a while until he finally caved. After the hurricane in Puerto Rico, then PG&E in California shuts down power for safety, then COVID all generators new and old nation/world wide were clear sold out for years. It is starting back down but sellers don't want to budge yet and might not for a long time.
I have a Miller 325EFI welder that is 12000 watts intermittent and 10000watts continuous for my back up. Put welder on wheels to roll in and out of shop when needed. Put it outside of shop for when welding jobs are needed. Have more than one use, and very reliable and service is available as lots of repair places for these kind of units. Not for use of natural gas, but have not needed for power out yet in 9 years. This was my solution to generator need for backup.
Those little Kubotas will run forever too.
my 2000 Honda Will run 3 freezers and two fridges. It does not come off eco idle with a fridge and freezer. The other big stuff I can select/live without.
The issue we have is we need 240v for the well pump. Everything else will work of the 2000w Honda inverter. Just shuffle the cords for fridge and freezers.
This is something that doesn’t happen here, at least I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. We usually leave a generator plugged in all the time, a transfer switch isolates whichever power source is not being used. Only takes a sparky about 20 minutes to install one. We still call it a suicide switch though.
Why did it melt? Genuinely curious. Did it turn into a motor when power was fed back into it?
That is what I'm guessing. Not being a knowledgeable person on electric side of this old genset that seems about right.
It will only motor if it is already rotating when power is applied to it. If it is standing still and power comes onto it, it will just sit there and burn.
I figured that is what happened, from the smoke that filled the garage. Think I was just lucky it did not cause a fire. Hope that's the worst screw-up I do for some time!
Just curious for guys with a lot of fridge / freezer does power go out more in cold weather or warm weather?
Probably more spring/fall frequency here. Usually a sudden dramatic weather event is the cause.
Its usually thunderstorms that take down branches that take down power lines. We rarely have ice storms here, and snow doesn't generally build up and stay on power lines like ice does. I've lost power maybe 6 times in the last 8 years that I've lived where I do. The longest stretch was 48 hours. The local power coop spent a lot of money in 2016 on vegetation removal and tree trimming, and they went back through 5 years later for upkeep. This has made a huge improvement in power delivery according to my neighbors that have been here for over 20 years.
Back in the day before we had mains power we used to have a Lister “Start o Matic” lighting plant. Twin cyl. air cooled Lister diesel with a 6kva generator. When any light switch was flicked on in the house, solenoids would decompress the motor, pull the fuel rack and introduce power to the windings of the generator from a 12v battery to spin the engine up.
We get several outages a year now, car accidents or storms causing trees to come down. Big winds in the late fall/early winter are common and are usually short outages, 4 or 5 hrs. We also get outages due to heavy wet snow bringing down trees or branches on the lines every few yrs. It is kind of a crap shoot, we were out for 7 hrs a few weeks ago while places 40 minutes away were out for a lot longer. My friend also 40 minutes away wasn’t out at all. Cam
When did you get mains power Q'lder? It would have been mid to late 70's for us, I have faint memories as a child watching TV and the generator running out of fuel, so we couldn't see the end of whatever we were watching. The house my parents are in now, was my grandparents, there are still some 32volt appliances sitting in the corner of a shed.
I have a Starlink mainly for backup Internet, as needed. If fiber goes down, pay for a month of Starlink, plug it in to the firewall, and away we go. A sure fire way the fiber will be back up in short order.
I have heard of people making those double ended cords, then trying to run the entire grid off their generator, or electrocuting some poor linesman. It is why they are really illegal and changeover switches were invented
Wouldn't it have to be a DC generator in order to act like a motor if power was back fed to it and/or wouldn't the engine turn over possibly in the wrong direction? Lincoln true DC generators can be used as a starting motor but Miller 3 phase AC alternators have stickers saying they can't be started by applying power to the welding terminals. Wondering if the in-rush current just fried the generator and starting it threw the bits out.
It can act like a motor but it has to be up to speed already. If it is stopped you are putting AC to it it doesn't know whether to go left or right. Also no voltage built up in the rotor.
IMO Hansen took one for the team and I appreciate him reporting back. I too will admit a screw up and if it saves somebody's ass down the road it is all good.
Just a guess, but I assume that our old generator had some system of additional, but separate, windings that made it act like a motor when 12v DC was fed to it. We didn’t get mains power until 1983. Prior to about 1970 we had a 32v lightning plant with a big single cyl. diesel and a huge bank of batteries. The batteries would last just long enough to watch the Cisco kid and half of F Troop on tv after we got home from school. Newer changeover switches fit on a din rail and are even less obtrusive.
It would also turn the engine over. The fact the engine still ran I think the generator just got fried. Kudo's to Kshansen for bringing it up. I think everybody has done things with drastic consequences only to realize it too late. Sometimes a second too late. I recently burnt out the glow plug indicator on my Kubota powered skid steer by putting 12 volts directly too it. It glowed really brite for about 2 seconds then the coil fell right out. Forgot to realize it needs the resistance from the glow plugs to limit the current going through it. Thankfully it's not an expensive fix like a generator.
I had never heard of the start-o-matic. But found this comprehensive operating manual online.
Instead of Kudo's how about sending dollars? I'd even take those with pictures of the Queen! Other than the cost of which way we do go, stationary automatic generator or another portable, I guess I'm lucky to have had the now dead unit for 25 years at no cost to me! The cheap b*****d in me just hates thinking about sending that good running engine to the scrap yard. Then again finding someone who wants to buy it might be a problem. From what I've been told it is actually a Briggs engine but only has tags saying it's Generac. I understand it has a tapered end on the crank so reusing it for some other purpose might not be very easy.
I always thought B&S owned Generac. I could send money but with the USPS suspending service with Canada (because of a postal strike here), the value of the Cad. dollar and tariffs coming it would end up costing you money to receive it. Sorry about that. I think it was great you brought it up. Could prevent someone else from having the same fate with their generator.
Where about are you in Canada, I know some people there who could help with the handling of the money
Long ass ways from you hahaha
I'm in what Americans refer to as the frozen North. LoL Not the coldest place in Canada (Edmonton) but usually hit -40 a few times a year. I'm not keen to even get out of bed when it's that cold. Add a little snow and some wind and it's just brutal. Thankfully we don't have power failures very often.
Well I happen to know people across a lot of that country, would it help me if I mentioned my maternal grandfather was in the Canadian Army during WW1?
Paypal and Venmo aren't affected by the Postal strike. Just trying to be helpful . . .
My grandfather got a meritorious service award in WW 1. Came from the UK to fight for Canada. Lived to 95. What's more interesting is he was originally scheduled to be on the Titanic but couldn't make it on time so came on the next ship. My grandma and him were still living in their own house into their 90's. He was still pretty sharp when passed away.