Was wondering what generators you guys like to use. I'm thinking in the 6000W range or bigger and Diesel. I want something simple, reliable, and good on fuel. I have heard some people say the best generator to get is two. I think I agree with that with all the import junk any more. I am getting ready to put a light tower into service as a generator to see how that will do. It has a 6000w pancake generator on it powered by a Mitsubishi L3E engine. Is that a good setup, good on fuel, start good in the cold? The pancake generators seem to be very common in light towers. What to stay with a 1800RPM unit, it will run quite a bit.
Have worked on a lot of Kubota powered ones that were 6-8 KW and are long life units. Cheap on fuel and seen some with 20- 35000 hours. Of course they all need oil changes and valves set regularly. Frontier Power in Alberta has sold 10's of thousands to the oil patch. Simon C
Yeah. Kubota is the de facto GOAT of small generators. It’s what you put on a mountain top radio repeater for six months and return the next spring to fuel it and adjust the valves, change the oil. Engineering marvel. Amazing how a manufacturer can make a product like that, when their customer demands it.
These pop up on govplanet can be had for 1200 or so of course you have to (I do anyways) convert to 12 volt and get rid of the government circuit protection and add a breaker. They are 10kw will do 50 amps out put is 240/120. Engines are turboed d722 kubotas.
What model of engine are they? Also what kind of generator head?
The GL series use the Kubota Z482, D722, or D902 with Sawafuji alternators.
There is a smaller niche company called Alaska Diesel Electric that produces super high quality marine and land-based generator sets under the Northern Lights brand. I worked for a dealer, back in the old days. They are the generator you want for your apocalypse bunker or third world adventures. Instead of using intigrated circuit boards and proprietary parts, they use Bosch relays, switches and wire. Easy to fix and find parts for. They are a joy to work on. Great wire diagrams, parts books and service manuals.
The Lugger division of the same company used to marinize 6D140 Komatsu engines into propulsion packages. Very popular in Alaska and the East Coast Lobsta biz.
I also have a northern lights 8kw i got govplanet with 17 hrs on it. I should sell it but for what i got in it i stand to make too much money on it
We sell Generac. Make a distinction between standby & manual. Most people here have portable generators we haul out to power our homes in a utility outage. Tractor owners like PTO driven three point hitch machines. These work best if you have indoor storage where you can back up to hitch up. Some want standby machines fully automatic. Those we sell most often are 14 killowatt air cooled, 3600 RPM twin cylinders. I can't remember an engine failure from normal wear. We have seen engine fails because screws loosen up somewhere. One; a screw that holds plastic shroud in place 1/2" long screw fell out, rattled around inside the hollow flywheel till it punched a hole in the crankcase. It was extended warranty work, cost the owner nothing. He works for LOCKTITE. He remarked $0.01 in Locktite would have prevented an engine fail. Another; machine installed by a non servicing dealer, screws holding a magneto coil loosened up, flywheel hit the coil. Ruined flywheel, both coils, caused it to backfire, blew up the muffler. We repaired it under warranty. Homeowner called Generac a year later, claimed it never did run again. Dead of winter, installer chose the lowest point on the property to install the generator. It was glass ice, with 4" of fluffy snow on top, bitter cold & windy. We could barely stand up. Found the same screws that loosened before had worked loose despite Locktite. I declared the threaded holes in the engine to be wallowed out enough to prevent a secure screw hold. wasn't enough metal there to use a helicoil, new engine.
^^^ and you still sell Generac after these problems ?
I use my Miller Trailblazer Airpack. I think it's 12.5k/ 50A. Keeps things going no problem. I do want a PTO unit though. Mainly to have a low speed diesel set up. I have my off road 300 gallon tank here and I would run it with my Kubota L6060. I could make it for quite awhile with that combo.
I have a generator I picked up from a cell site a couple years back. It a ford 300 on propane. I've planned on putting it at home, my wife is going to howl about its beautiful lime green color. I've also thought about just leaving it at my shop, I've got propane there, and don't have any propane at home. I'll probably not do anything about it until we have a bad ice storm and I'll be totally unprepared.
Two freak failures among hundreds? They were repaired under warranty. I do believe Covid caused generator sales to soar. Generac doubled production, was forced to hire a lot of new people. I think quality control suffered for a time.
At work we have a Generac model 55 it had problems from the word go it was new in october of 2019. We couldnt drag it to one site and use it for a day with out it not working. Any how they didnt have much interest in fixing it. Fast forward to con ex 2020 Im walking though and come across the generac booth and strike up a "conversation" till i was done causing a disruption amongst the people thet pasted me a card for a person in corprate or where ever after 1 call to them the dealer fixed it and it got parked in the corner for a spare and we bought a Cat to replace it. As far as im concered generac can keep there junk. This is a very heavy case of the dealer makes the product perhaps the home owner stuff is good I have no first have experiance.
Farmer down the road bought a PTO driven one from Katolight.
Many years ago, decades before I was a dealer, I was an electrician. Farmer had a PTO Generac in a dog house bolted to a concrete block. I'll say poor planning, there wasn't room for a human to work on it. Had a failure in a circuit board component of the voltage regulator. Generac said NLA (no longer available). Generator was a few years old at the time! After months of failing to source the bits on the board that had failed I was frustrated. Called Generac one last time, demanded to speak to tech support. The tech said: "Hell no, we haven't used those boards in a while. We change them out to solid state regulators. The boards were not tolerating moisture. He sent a solid state regulator, wiring harness, and instructions to convert. A generator is as dependable as the service technician. Without good tech support, you'll be in trouble.
This ^^^ sounds like a very bad OEM, as soon as your request went in for the VR and you were told NLA, you should have "At that Time" been told of the retrofit kit. Another reason why I won't look at Generac for anything.
Nowhere in post #10 did you indicate qty (2) sir.
Like my Presidential vote, I'm not in love with either or any choice. I choose the lesser of the evils. These days Generac has good technical support. I can't live without that. I believe no manufacturer offers a trouble free forever generator. All the major brands sell a functional machine until it isn't. I've had discouraging experiences with Briggs, and Kohler, I feel 10 years ago Briggs didn't measure up with engines, placement of engines above the generator where any leaks, or even spills ended up in the generator. Having to remove bolts & ill fitting sheet metal parts to check the oil stinks. Others are more expensive, and could give problems also.
I don’t have a horse in this race, but I’ll say Generac is a master at marketing and homeowners around the MatSu are purchasing them like crazy. Fred buys one. He is the only house with lights when the power goes out, then his neighbors all get one. Landlords are installing them on rentals, too because it’s less expensive than dealing with a frozen house.
Well spoken. Work the best with what is available. Simon C
I'm a local small scale dealer. In my radius 50 retailers sell Generac generators. My son felt it worthwhile to be a "servicing dealer". Before Covid, he had to go out of state three days for training. That is expensive!! Since 100% of trouble calls are weekend, 90% are night, he doesn't work weekends, none are our customers, I lean to discontinuing the servicing dealer status.
Understand the dilema. People don't do their monthly checks and the power goes out on Saturday night at 12:30 and you should be there in 20 minutes, and your not going to charge me are you. Nice try their is a full mouse house in your unit and 3000 pine cones from a squirrel, when did you check it last.LOL Simon C
Do not laugh or make fun of me, Or laugh and make fun of me. I used my Harbor Freight 2k inverter/generator for 06 days running my Fridge, TV and Dish box, a fan to circulate the heat, and a LED light. I am guessing I burned less than 07 gallons of gasoline, a full tank ran over 13 hours. Your results may vary
What would those be used for that I would search them as. Also what kind of generator head? Would it be hard to get parts for the generator part?
They are normally listed as auxilary power. Parts for the engines i always justs cross them to a kubota tractor if you where to end up with one i can email you the manuals
I like the look of those Northern Lights generators. They look like they are built rugged and simple like what I want. Don't need auto start or anything fancy. The simpler the better. The Generac inverter generator that I have seems to be alittle better than Harbor Freight. It gets in these moods where it doesn't want to run right and just messes around. About ready to throw it in the trash several times. The best inverter I've had was a Yamaha. Keep fuel to it and it would just sit and do nothing wrong all day. It was rated lower than the generac but it could pull more load. Yamaha quit making generators though. I've been looking at these light towers for awhile and they look like they could be an economical generator to get. Most are powered by a Kubota, Perkins, or Mitsubishi. All those would be good engines. It seems like 3/4 of them have the pancake generator head by Marathon. Is that a good generator head? You could just look around until you found the engine you wanted. I think they are brushless. Is that better than one with brushes?
Are they 3600RPM? I am wanting 1800RPM, less fuel, quieter, last longer.
Does anyone know what these would be for? https://www.govdeals.com/en/asset/7594/9842 They are Kubota engines and have crank starts with them.
These are 3600
I wonder if a misprint, I rarely see a diesel wants to run 3600 RPM. 1800 RPM is more diesel speed.
No there 3600 the little kubota well most small diesels spin 3600
Generator at home is a 3600 7kW 2cyl Kubota powered MQ. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but picked it up for free out of the back of the yard at an old employer and put a new stator in it. Had no complaints after running the whole house during a 3 day outage. Ate about 5 gallons every 24 hours.
It's not so much about the sheetmetal, rather the obsoleting the VR board, and then not telling you a new retrofit kit is available until you inquired how many times ? In our business, it's called a "supercedure" and the notice goes out on the old part "DO NOT USE, USE XXX INSTEAD". I like the professional gensets, inline engines, robust electronics (minimal as well).
This kind. 8 Kw Pancake head hooked to a D1005 Kubota and rated at 7.5 Kw. 1800 RPM 30 gallon tank, 6000 watt portable suntan bed option.
I've had quite a few over the years. Early on I had a PTO generator. This worked well but I didn't like my tractor running full tilt unattended for many hours at a time. Tractors are not designed to run unattended and if something goes wrong it would most likely ruin a very expensive tractor. I had a light plant. This had a Marathon pancake generator and a kubota D905 engine. Good engine, bad generator. These generators are designed for running lights and not much else. They are not regulated. I connected mine for 240v with neutral. If you loaded one 120v circuit it would go down and the other would go up. I reconnected for just 120v and it was ok for this. Wound up selling this. I actually called Marathon tech support at one point and the guy said these generators are just minimal and not very good for any type application other than lights. I have a Miller diesel welder that was one of the worst things I ever bought. The thing about welders, especially Miller, they are trying to get the most HP out of a small engine. They generally have 2 pole generators and so run at 3600rpm. Mine was a mouse house and ruined inside because if it. I decided to rip all the electrics out of it and bought a generator head from Central Georgia Generator. Quite a looser of a project but sort of fun. This made about the best 6-7kw generator a person can find. Very nice package now, just a generator not a welder anymore. In 2008 I bought a 25kva Wacker tow behind generator. This was a smoking deal at the time with 1500 hours or so. Wonderful machine! Runs for days on a tank of fuel, runs the whole house, very quiet. This has a 4 cyl isuzu engine. Since about 2015 or so these are ruined in my opinion since they are all common rail engines and probably not practical to maintain for an individual. I just bought a Kohler 30kw standby generator. It's an ugly duck with the housing rust but it's only got 250hrs on it and has a Deere 4 cylinder naturally aspirated engine. Looks pretty promising. It starts right up, and has a big tank. Lots of these type takeout generators around with very low hours. Less desirable for lots of people since they are not portable. If you can find a light plant with a good engine but otherwise clapped out I think buying one of the generator heads from central georgia generator and installing makes a nice setup. Below is a picture of my frankenstein Miller generator. I installed two chicom digital voltage/current/frequency meters on it. It has a Kubota D1005 engine, Central Georgia Gen 8kw 1ph Gen Head. I put expanded metal over all the big holes to keep the varmints out this time. Seems like Miller could figure this out. I did quite a bit of testing when I finished this one and it regulates well and it'll do up to about 7kw. I know many people will say that's not much power at all but this thing really runs nice. It's got 2500 hours on the engine and will probably run for many thousand more if maintained. Not so for a gas generator.
That is good to know about the light towers. I thought that they would be a good deal, but it sounds like they are not made for heavy use. I'd be glad to hear anyone's experience with using light towers as generators. I just got mine going this week. It seems to work good so far. Just using it to power some lights and heater ect. Do you think the generators from Central Georgia Generator are good quality? I have seen them but don't know what brand they are or where they are made.
I've only run a few saws and compressors on my light plant. I will do some testing next time It runs. I load both sides of it when I use it.
When we did the remodel, we went big: 2x 500 gallon propane: Should have gone with a 1000 gallon buried tank, but I didn't know what I didn't know. Here is a video of the beast: Bigger than we needed, but it was what was available. Ruh, ruh, ruh
Not long ago I had a bad port relief valve in the boom lift circuit of a John Deere 410C backhoe. John Deere eliminated privately owned dealers a number of years back. To my knowledge there is now 1 dealer in a 200 mile radius. Boom lift port relief is a different part number from several others on the same machine. If I recall others are 3500 PSIG rated, this is 4500 rated. John Deere says NLA. After exploring salvage yards, aftermarket sources, hydraulic shops, I was at a dead end. Called Nortrax for the fifth time. I asked to speak to the service manager. I asked him: "If your best customer needed this part would you refuse to help?" He said: "No, we'd rebuild it, sell a new one, tighten the adjuster screw, or sell a rebuild kit." He sold a rebuild kit $57. My previous four calls were a dead end: "Sorry, No Longer Available." Same tractor, the cast aluminum hydraulic filter can was cracked. Dealer said NLA. In time I found a salvage yard half way across the country would sell me a used one for $800. I managed to weld the one I had. It seems the bigger the company, the less they care about their customers.
I'm always amazed how many people happily spend gobs of money on a standby generator. I've never had such a customer. I think Generac has stopped the campaign, years they advertized you can have a fully automatic standby generator for less than $2000. Buying a generator is only part. I tell a potential customer it'll cost $6000.-$7000. 19 out of 20 excuse themselves, & walk away.
In the 30 years we have lived here we have had some doozers of power outages. Weeks in winter, weeks in summer, general flakiness any time the weather is unexpected. For years we had (and still have) an air cooled 10KW unit, cable and manual transfer switch (enough for fridge, freezer, well, septic, propane furnace, etc). We share it with the house and the business. Always seems to be in the wrong place when it is needed. This thing Just Works™ - rated at 7 seconds from power loss to full power. When we did the remodel, we already had rerouting the power underground ( trees took out the power lines ) and moving the propane tanks closer to the road in the plan, so it was less of an incremental hassle to add the generator to the mix. Relative to the expansive remodel, it was a minor expense: I must say that this generator is 100% effective -- in the ~3 years since we have installed it, there have been -ZERO- unscheduled power outages. Not only is our house protected, but the entire road of 25+ houses served by the line that goes by our house. So not only is it protecting our house, it is protecting the entire road This must be some corollary to Murphy's Law: If you buy an automatic standby generator, the power reliability from your power company will automatically improve.
Of the consumer type home generators i’ve seen i was totally unimpressed. They remind me of a john deere garden tractor from lowes. My old boss had one installed. 2 pole generator so it had to run at 3600 rpm. It sounded like it was about to blow up when new. By contrast my diesel generators run at 1800 rpm. Sounds almost like a fast idle.
About the Central Georgia Generator (CGG) Heads... I think they are Chinese which isn't a good thing to me. But, the guy that owns is first class and the support is very good. Also, the generator heads are brushless and come with a regulator. My experience with the one I bought was very good and the quality I think is good. I had to buy an SAE bell housing and flywheel too from him since my Miller welder didn't have an SAE mount. This was another part of what made the welder conversion project such a looser. But, I didn't seen anyone else really selling and supporting just generator heads as CGG does so I wouldn't hesitate to buy another. I think most light plants do have SAE bell housing and flywheels. At least mine with the Magnetek pancake generator did.
I cut the corner on backup with the solar panels and battery, but I can still put in a breaker and interlock for the Genset out in the panel by the meter. Super easy access for that.
Preaching to the choir. I love the slow variety until I price one. No chance I'll ever own one.
I've only been involved on the outside with bigger, or even off grid generators. I believe you cross into diesel engines, and generators built to specific needs. In those they have to be somewhat standard. One I recall paired a John Deere engine to a German built dynamo. It could be configured to multiple voltage, & phase choices.
There are deals out there for used diesel generators. Some of the military surplus ones are pretty nice too.
I do generators for a living and my current home generator is a 3 cylinder 1800 RPM diesel. Was going to move it down the line eventually, but my supply of free used diesel never runs out so here it sits doing its duty year after year. Have been through a couple of weeklong outages and one fire with it.
I fired it up and run the lamps every couple of months, long enough to get the oil warm. It has not operated in anger for a long while. Now I have grid power.
What brand of engine and generator head is it? I would love to hear more about your experiences working on generators. They have always been fascinating to me. I have been using my light tower and it seems to be working good. Don't remember if I had all ready said but it has a Mitsubishi L3E engine and a Pancake generator head.
Used diesel, how does that work? Capture black smoke exhaust and add water to reconstitute?
VTel had central offices in each town. Used to have diesel generators. Typical building had a John Deere engine driven 50 KW generator & 2 275 gallon tanks. They found diesel does indeed go bad. They had a program to pump out the tanks annually, refill with fresh. Now, I believe all have been switched to propane fueled.
Hell the water in it is half the issue! We've had plenty of 'bad' diesel that gets pumped out and replaced, and plenty of good diesel pumped out from sending units sticking in place and tanks getting overfilled and going into alarm. My old IDI pickup eats what it can and the rest gets hauled off for folks with oil burner home/shop heating.
Almost all large generators around here, try and run their generators weekly, if on a maintenance plan. There are a few companies that specialize in pumping out and filtering large generator tanks and they end up with a lot of possibly contaminated diesel. They put adds in CL and FB, trying to get rid of it.
When fuel capacity is several weeks, outages are few & brief, diesel gets old. I would surely like to have the "old" diesel. Might be replaced at one year, won't be a problem for two more years.
It is a Mitsubishi S3L2 engine and Mecc Alte AVR regulated head. SDMO generator. The governor has a problem, engine has plenty of power but gov will drop RPM bad when loaded above about 50%, but I have not cared because my house rarely draws over 5 kw anyway. If you advance the hand throttle it has plenty of power to run full load but the gov is just not strong enough.
I have a lot with medium and large diesels I take care of, I use a company that specializes in "polishing" fuel. First they run it through filters and have clear glass pipes, you can see water, dirt, welding rods, slag, nuts and bolts. Then they switch to fine filters to get the rest of the junk out of it. Almost every tank has a pretty unacceptable level of contamination on it.
What is your opinion on the 2 cylinder Onan generators used in motorhomes and campers. I have a couple. I believe they are 3000 watt units running at 1800 rpm. I would think they would be more long lasting than the screamers. Mine are 120v only. Couldn't they be stepped up to 240v with a transformer?
Easily step them up, I'm not familiar with price, I'd expect to spend $1200. for the transformer, $400. for the components to connect. I have a Kohler 7500 watt unit in the shed I'd love to sell for $300. We used to install them for battery storage off grid systems. They are good for 20,000 hours before rebuild. If you want 120 volt power these are perfect.
You don't need a transformer, 90% of them have dual windings and can simply be reconfigured. But I am not a fan, early in my generator career my predecessor had converted many of the Onan twins to propane and installed them shoddily in people's houses for off grid application. They have commutators which go bad more than they should, and they are flat heads which are terribly inefficient, burn a lot of propane for the power you get. I spent a lot of time and other peoples' money keeping the things running. Nobody is left running one now, they are ancient history. The Kohler 14 kw is a much better, more reliable replacement, even though it is 3600 RPM.
The Kohler manual shows procedure to switch to 240 volt. Manual applies to several models, mine doesn't seem to have those leads to change. Be a fine backup generator if it did. On grid homes are always set up for 240/120 volt power. I had one very similar 15 years ago, used it to power a welder rebuilding a building after the great flood. I ultimately sold that one.
All the Generac units I've been around are mass-produced consumer grade crap. My uncle who was a big commercial/residential electrical contractor was a dealer for them for about a year and quickly dropped them in favor of Cummins/Onan.The Generacs had poor quality components, poor quality control and too many call-backs. My brother who installed them for a propane company had similar feelings.
Give me a model and serial and I will tell you how it can be done, if it can be done. Including some ideas that are not found in any book. I spent a lot of time and energy amassing these ideas but it never really paid off.