[Jeepwm69]

Had some bad weather here last weekend. I'm going to be running a saw some cleaning up a downed tree in the parents' yard.

Decent sized oak fell and destroyed an ancient dogwood that my great grandmother planted. Our street was lined on both sides by dogwoods she planted and that was the last survivor.

I left early on a bargain hunting trip so I turned in early, slept through the storm. Woke up to no electricity. When they said it was going to be at least 24 hours, I got out my generator. I have a 6500W unit with a Honda 13HP GX engine. Just rolled over 100 hours on it last night.

I picked up an old Honda ES3500 a few years ago, and got it running for my sister to keep on hand. She has a catering business so she has 8-9 fridges and freezers full of food, which means she HAS to have a generator if we lose power for long. The ES is electric start, so she won't have to yank on a recoil. It fired right up but wouldn't charge. Mice had built a nest in the control box and about 1/3 of the wires and terminals had disintegrated, presumably from mouse pee. So that's on my list this week. I've got it pulled part, have to redo the wiring to the circuit breakers and outlets.

On a bright note, I got 17.5 gallons of Delo XLT 400 10W30 oil on closeout. $4/gallon and $9 for a 2.5 gallon jug. Gotta love closeouts!

https://brickseek.com/walmart-inventory-checker?sku=35950292

https://brickseek.com/walmart-inventory-checker?sku=167025207

 

[retro]

Awesome deal on the motor oil! But that rewiring job doesn't sound like its gonna be easy. Ya got a manual for it I hope..?

 

[fishfiles]

Monday a week ago was the opening of shrimp season , my friend went out shrimping on his 42ft'er and his 8K generator wasn't making electricity , no air conditioning and he was bumming , so he called me from the water , I don't really know a lot about the brushless generators , so I called a friend who is service manager of a equipment rental house , so he told me have him put his meter in the receptacle and check voltage which was 3 volts , so I call him back and tell him 3 volts , he says take a extension cord and cut it , then strip the ends , put one wire on positive and the other on negative of the battery , start the generator and put the 110 plug on the end of the cord into the receptacle on the generator for a split second and it would excite the generator , sure enough it worked and it went to making electricity and he left it running and made the day , and told me when he got back to the dock and killed and restarted the generator it didn't make voltage , my mechanic friend said , he should take a look at the capacitor for discoloration or swelling and test it with a meter to the specs listed on side the capacitor , it was a 25 ( milli something with an "F" ) capacitor , he told me that + or - 5% is ok , so my buddy went to an appliance store and matched one up and changed it the next day and it worked ----------- that was pretty wild --------- years ago I use to watch a pipeline mechanic I worked with charge 24 volt battery systems on equipment with a welding machine , I was a little too scary to do that , I have seen batteries blow up

 

[Jeepwm69]

Fish, another way to do that is to plug a drill into the generator, put the switch in forward, and then rotate the chuck backward. That will excite the generator as well and get it going.

Retro, hoping that it won't be too hard to rewire. The terminals on the 110 outlet were toast, so I've got to get a new outlet and run new wires to it. Honestly it looks like the circuit breakers are wired to the outlets just like a home fuse panel would be (which makes sense) so hopefully running new wires won't be too hard.

 

[fishfiles]

Jeep , I told my buddy the service manager about your reversible drill exciter method and he says he is going to try it first chance it comes up , he loves stuff like that , and we always are exchanging info and shooting the bull about strange things that happen