Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

[JustJason]

Ohhh the weather outside is frightfull.....
And in new england...... nothing works well.....

Okay folks... We had a major ice storm in all of NE with some pretty serious damage. I've had no power since thursday.... and probably won't get it back untill this thursday at the earliest.

My GF's (girlfriend) BIL has a Honda Gen.... but die's out at WOT. With or without a load. Engine overrevs and the govenor surges and chokes out the motor. It's 4 years old and never gets run. I take the carb off. No visible varnish or junk. I hose the thing with carb cleaner and compressed air.... just like any outboard carb I clean... Put it all together, set idle mixture, fire it up then load the genset up and check the GOV..... all is well according to the specs on the sticker.... And it now runs fantastic...... It's within 100RPM of it's max rated and has been going 7+ hours straight without a hiccup. Something will kick on... gen loads up... engine bogs for a second or 2 then the GOV does it job and no problems at all.

So then my GF's parents let me borrow a genset from her foreverly deceased grandfather..... a coleman powermate with a tecumseh engine..... supposedly 4000 Watts. It has to be 25+ yearls old.
Hasn't been run in at least 10 years. I can't find any id's on the motor other than tecumseh stickers all over it...... I'll look again tomorrow when it's light out but so far I can't find a model or serial..... let alone spec's for the thing.... so i'm doing this all by ear.
GF's father knows i'm coming to look at it and decides to throw some gas in it before I get there. And..... he throw's (of course) pre-mix in it (it's a 4 stroke motor) and he puts gas for the chainsaw gas can in it.

I mess with it for a bit. And get it to run okay. I think its probably a 8 to 12 horse engine based off of the size of the block... eyeballing it..... but of course i could be wrong..... with no ###'s or specs to look at. (best WAG)
Even after my best engine doesn't run for anything.
Spark is hot and fairly blue on the Steven's spark board at 1/2 inch.
Fixed timing engine.
Compression 110psi.
Not positive if it has the correct plug in it.... i just cleaned and regapped the plug that was in it to .30
After all that.... i pulled the carb and it was a mess..... So I cleaned it. Dumpd the fuel tank... put fresh 87 in it and it was a million times beter. Start it and run it.... plug in some stuff and put a load on it... and then set the adjustable high speed jet by ear. (there is no low speed..... only a mixture screw) In fact this has not low speed at all.... it starts then rev's up to WOT...then the GOV takes over.
Problem i'm having is this..... Engine runs fine for 45 minutes under a medium load (if I did my watt's law correctly... and i think I did). Runs everything OK... then just dies.
If I unplug everthing..... and screw with the mixture scres it runs grreat againl... for another 30 min's or so...... then dies.

Every time it dies it takes 10+ minuted of messing with the highspeed screw to get it to to run at all...... then a litttle fine tweakin when it's loaded. The time frame varies........ sometimes its 10 minutes withoug a hiccup..... other times' it's 45.... I can't find a pattern to it yet.

My best guess is..... is the engine is underpowered to start with. and loading it doesn't help. It will work for 46 minutes withought a hiccup.... then it just dies.
I'm obviously skiipping out on either fuel spark or air.... but I can't get this one yet.

So my question is...... have any of you guys had a hard time with old motors that were originally designed to work off of a different forumula of gas. ethanal doesn't have the BTU's of normal gas does.

I have no idea why this thing can run for 45 minutes fine then crap out all off a sudden.... with no apparent change in engine loat.

Anybody have any ideas???/
Thanks
J

 

[JB]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

My guess is debris in the fuel tank getting to the carb. Engine that old built up some deposits in the fuel tank when it was burning E0 gas and the E10 is breaking them loose. Try a water seperating filter between the tank and carb.

 

[Limited-Time]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Could be a heat issue. Did you check for spark when it dies?? If you still have fire It's almost got to be fuel related as JB mentioned.

 

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Like LT mentioned, when it quits, check for spark right away. Some coil packs will break down and fail when they get hot. Also another thing you might want to check is the gas cap vent. Make sure that it is venting. It could be clogged and not allowing air to get into the tank preventing flow of gas to the carb.

 

[Jack Shellac]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

I think JB's right. A little trash in the fuel system clogging the jet. This is why they start when you open the needle a little bit-it lets the fuel get by. This is common when equipment like generators are only run at long intervals.

 

[Lone Duck]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Yup! also check float level and if needle & seat are sticking.

 

[Limited-Time]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Like LT mentioned, when it quits, check for spark right away. Some coil packs will break down and fail when they get hot. Also another thing you might want to check is the gas cap vent. Make sure that it is venting. It could be clogged and not allowing air to get into the tank preventing flow of gas to the carb.

Spot on SS I forgot about the venting issue. I've seen the same thing happen on a torpedo heater (Kerosene fired). I picked one up at a yard sale, the seller told me it would only run for about 20 min before shutting down. When I fired it up it ran for about 20 min and sputtered out. When I removed the filler cap (not original) I heard a sucking sound, it was air rushing into the tank. I plugged the heater back in and it fired right up. When it started to sputter again (20 min later) I quickly loosened the cap and it picked right back up. So I drilled a small hole in the cap and It's run well ever since.

 

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

I went thru this with my generator about a month ago when our power went out. I had to pull the carb, shake out the filter, clean the plug, dump old gas out, and put fresh gas in. It fired right up and ran ok. It hadn't been started for about 5 years. I used it to power my boat before I was able to get a dock with power.

If the float was the problem, it would have problems right off, not after 20 minuets of running. Could be trash in the pick up line in the fuel tank, but that shouldn't allow it to be started right back up unless it was cleared. Hopefully it is an easy fix for him. ........SS

 

[jay_merrill]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Check the oil level - most small generators have a sensor in the crankcase that will shut the motor down due to low oil level. While you might think that the oil would get to a certain level, and the unit would then shut down one time, they often don't do that. You can sometimes start them up again and they will run for awhile. As the oil gets progressively lower, the duration will become shrter and shorter, until the generator won't run at all.

 

[chiefalen]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Bingo Jay. Also might be overfull, shuts it down also. Just unplug that sensor from the block, might be a spade clip.

You did clean all the little holes in the carb and the screw that hold the bowl on.

There may be a hole at the base, you get it clean ?

 

[JustJason]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

This ones all set.....
Spilt the block in two. Sludge everywhere.... but more inportantly sludge all over the govoner weights. 1 of the weights had lost its spring (that luckily, i did find undamaged in the sludge).
Cleaned it all up, put the block back together, reset the governor. Works great now...... although there is no way this thing is 4000 watts.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Don't worry about a bit of pre-mix in a Tecumseh, especially an old one. They'll run on about anything, as long as it's clean.

We have a number of Ontario Hydro crews down in NH and MA helping out on the restoration of power.
Good luck and hope you are back up soon.

 

[JustJason]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

Thank you tim and to the rest of our neighbors from the north.

I have my power back. When I was first futsing around with this genset it was in my garage with both doors open, with the only light coming from a car running in front of the door with it's high beams on. And It was 15 degrees. I had enough of it and came to my GF's house in another town(with power) when I originally posted this thread.

Its tough up here right now for alot of folks. Lots of people going on day 11 or 12 with no power... and no money to buy generators. We got 2 feet of snow over the weekend and right now the wind chill is just below zero.

You can drive all over and see signs that read "all I want for christmas is my damm power back"

 

[DJ]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

NEGLECT is the nemesis of generators. It is almost always gummed fuel/carb. I've repiaired many.

BTW, the Honda units have extremely small carb. jets. They clog very easily. They are so small that I have not been able to clear many of them. Had to replace.

I do have a story about a new one.

Recently, at a huge Church function, we bought two good sized Gen Sets from a big box store. Jippo Chinese jobs. (I was not in on the purchase decision)

I was elected to go pick them up, with a buddy. We did. On the way back to the function I ACTUALLY READ one of the manuals. We stopped for fuel and topped them off plus numerous portable cans.

We get to the function, set them up and proceed to start them. One fired off immediately-NO problems.

The other refused to start-NADA-NO WAY.

I did the normal diagnostics and determind that there was just no fuel. After taking the engine shrouds off, I noticed the fuel line didn't look right-bent. I took the shroud off of the running unit (shut down) and compared the fuel line. Completely different.

The fuel line on the non-running unit was 1 1/2" too long creating a nice KINK. Cut off 1 1/2", reinstalled and-VAROOOOOM. Hero for a day-BIG DEAL.

The moral of the story is that: Just because it's new doesn't make it right.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Gensets with serious questions.... along with a rant....

In 1999 we had the same thing, a massive ice storm and there were large areas out for two weeks plus. In the city we were lucky and did not lose power at all, but the next street had a ton of downed trees that took out lines and they were out for a week before the crews got in to cut the trees loose and restring lines.
It was like a war zone.

Hope you are back up before Christmas!