Hi Fellas. I recently bought a 6500 watt electric-start petrol generator at a clearance sale - sight only, not able to be tested. Funnily enough everything worked fine - no issues but a bit rough 1st glance. Pumped up the tires, bashed out the dents and tidied up the wiring and paint and welded on a few lifting eyes as it's a heavy sucker. I decided to fit a 16 amp outlet on the main panel to allow hooking up to my caravans main cord. Upon tilting forward the front panel I was confused with the wiring colour/plug orientation so hooked out my Fluke and with the generator running checked it out. WTF! All three single phase outlets had phase and neutral transposed. This generator had been sat on an engineers truck, out in the elements for a few years running his Caddy's and other power tools no issues. God help someone had hooked up to a switchboard with MENS wiring. (or an old caravan). How many thousand of these are floating around out there with "To whom it may concern" hovering around them? ::)
Plenty of electrical safety gaffs by big name, high end appliance manufacturers, also. I found one fancy big (US) name electric range that had shorted the safety ground to neutral- in the main circuit board. Gross violation of safety codes- yet it still had UL sticker on it. This type of N-G short in appliances causes neutral current to flow on the safety ground system and cause grossly elevated magnetic fields in the home- even when the stove is not in use.