My (Steveu's) Inverter Generators

[SteveU.]

O.K. I finally hit 500 loaded operating hours on my Yamaha EF2800i inverter generator now after two months.
Popped the four bolt valve cover off and checked clearances - both were okay.
Pulled the spark plug on the warmed up engine - some wear and light tan colored. Spray-in dosed through the spark plug hole with some MOPAR combustion chamber cleaner. Let it sit 20 minutes. Then started it up and loaded it hard. Black exhaust smoke to start that cleaned right up.
Original spark plug now blackened some. Replaced with a new NGK spark plug.
The old yellowed/browned 125 hours in-use Castrol oil now blackened up a bit too. Changed out.
Baseline maintenance's now established.

100 hours oil changes with a synthetic.
500 hours combustion chamber spray cleanings; valve clearance adjustments; spark plug change outs.

By mine and the wife's in-vehicles honest-o-monitors that is a 13,000 to 15,000 mile usage interval equivalency.
Pretty good considering this Yamaha and the Honda inverter units are aircooled, non-pressurized oil, w/o oil filters.

Here-on in, I'll only be reporting at 500 hour intervals, or; if something goes wrong.

Damn but I've been a dumb-dumb these past ten years.
Either of these little inverter generator units will do us; anyone else in the family, just fine off-the-shelf.
Quiet enough down to 25-75 feet with three pieces of tilt up plywood shielding.
0.09 gallons US of fuel an hour running on stand-by.
0.17-0.19 gallons US of fuel an hour 1/4 rated loaded down.
Max rated loaded: 30% fuel savings over an equivalent wattage 3600 synchronous scream-a-matic.

Simple flex metal exhaust pipe out, and proven can light AND HEAT the greenhouse. Power my freezer room AND HEAT my tool room. Power the chicken house; hand tools/lighting power AND HEAT in my new all-metal welding/tractor shed.

Only project to do is sometime make up an exhaust to liquid heat exchanger for domestic hot water.

ANY/ALL with primary Solar; Wind; Micro-hydro will find that some percentage of time you gonna be needing some generator supplemental power!!
Best do this the quietest, most fuel and maintenance efficient way possible.
Don't need China. Don't need India. Don't need the permission of any Gibber-mint entity. Don't even need to become a battery bank, or starting battery beholden. Don't need to become a Brainiac projecteer squeezing for the last % of elusive carrot-on-a-stick efficiency, never actually using real daily. Use the heat shed-offs for real needs GIVES THE EFFICIENCY!

Regards
Steve Unruh

[glort]

The modern engineering of engines, especially the Jap ones is pretty amazing.

That said, I bought one of those cheap and nasty 2-stroke 800W Gennys many years ago for doing onsite work running a computer and printer and some flash heads.  I think the thing cost me $80 and after a bit of a run in I adjusted the thing to give a reasonable frequency which was initially way off.  I could run that thing all day with the varying and intermittent loads and it would used about 4L of fuel despite being a 2-stroke. It is very quiet as the muffler probably has a larger volume of area than the entire engine. I doubt it's had anywhere near 500 hours but it sure has done enough and been carried and chucked around enough to win my admiration. For a Little POS cheap as I could buy thing I hoped would hold together a few jobs till I made some money to get something better, it's STILL going. Only real problem was the mixture screw fell out of the carby but I managed to find another machine the same that was siezed by the side of the road and got the screw and the starter just in case.

The engines that i find amazing and have had plenty of first hand experience with are Subaru engines.
I have pulled the heads on a few now with over 500, 000 KM ( one well over 600K km) and the things still have the cross hatch right through the bores. The only way to kill them is through neglect or damage. The far 2 most common ways people kill them is by overheating or lack of oil.
You would be amazed how many people WILL see the gauge reading high or the light come on and think they will just go another 20-50 Km to town or home and of course don't make it.  The other thing is people never seem to change or top up their oil and of course the thing runs out doing 110 up a hill and it's gone by the time the light comes on.  Also hear plenty of accounts of people not putting sump plugs back in tight when they do change their oil, happens a lot with the hoon kids.

Other than that, these things seem to go forever and so do the AUTOMATIC  gearboxes. Manuals shit themselves regularly but very rare for an auto.  Common  exceptions being towing trailers/ boats/ vans that are way too heavy for the car and cooking the trans and losing oil, generally by holeing the pan or the screw on oil filter. Other than that, last forever.
It's a bit funny when people start getting pedantic about mileage on these things. They think 200K is getting high but I tell them, not even half way through their life yet and infinitely more die of neglect and stupidity than ever wear out.

The one my wife is driving has well over 200K km and runs like a swiss watch.  I got it with over 200K on it and did the belt/ Pump kit on the thing and threw on new head gaskets for good measure. Had a pair of High compression heads lying round so had them skimmed and checked and put them on. Made a big difference to the way the thing runs which is very noticable from her previous Suby which had the same engine but a lighter car and a manual but this one is much nicer and more responsive to drive.
barely uses any oil, has no leaks and the noisyest thing by far when it is idling is the sound of the fuel injectors firing.

A few years ago my friend bought a European Iveco truck.  7.5L engine, 14L sump, 100,000Km oil changes, warranted for 1M km on the engine.  Quite amazing.
My friend wasn't at all comfortable with the 100Km oil changes so got pedantic and did them at 50K km.  Still a long way between changes but even the people at a couple of stealerships he went to to have it done said it was completely unnecessary.

There are a lot of things made cheaply these days that don't last but even the China knock off engines seem to do well in the longevity and reliability stakes but the quality stuff is very hard to wear out given decent maintenance and attention.

[Tom Reed]

Just sold our 2001 Outback due to failing head gaskets. It's a real common problem here to  have them fail at around 120k mi. They start failing by leaking oil in the passage to the heads. The turbo Subies don't have the same issues. I understand you have diesel Subies down there. I always wanted one of those.

[glort]

Yep, there was a period of manufacture where mainly 2.5's had bad head gaskets.
I have not known them to ever leak oil, normally what they do is loose coolant. The turbos had different gaskets but they will lift them mainly when people want to start screwing more power out of the things or fitting bigger turbos etc.

Once replaced, it is highly uncommon for them to ever fail again if the job is done properly. The replacement gaskets are very different things to what was fitted OEM and I have not heard of them failing with the exception of cars done by a certain mechanic in the area that is know more for his failings than successes.

If the car has over heated due to loosing coolant which is the most common thing with thegaskets, the heads need to be checked they haven't gone soft.  If they are OK, a skim and reinstall with new gaskets is 99% of the time a permanent fix. That said, you can't tell some people about the soft head issue. some don't want to spend the money to have them checked or get replacements, some mechanics just have the soft heads skimmed and replace figuring they will take the money today and the job will be good for a few years anyway, and others change the gaskets and don't skim the heads or worry if they have lost their resilience or not.

It's not a big deal to do the gaskets or the heads and I'd never sell an otherwise good car just for a relatively minor problem like that. About that mileage one should be doing the belt, idlers and water pump anyway so just as easy to do the whole lot.  Making things easier is just to pull the motor. You can do it in situ but soooo much easier when the engine is out to do everything and it shouldn't take more than an hour to get out or put back in.

[SteveU.]

O.K. not much new here - just daily fueling/running the little Yamaha inverter genrator unit.
Actually my time this past week has been getting 2005 PT Cruiser eaten up helping an adult niece try and squeeze three more years out of this bleeding hands-painful to belts service "pretty".
I should have been out firewood cutting/splitting; and invasive weeds slaughtering. ALL things she cannot pay me back for. But the PT started running like a pig and that had to be sorted immidiatly. Badly worn spark plugs/wires; missing oil filler cap right off the bat. Still pig running. Compressions/leak down good. Strong 30-50 KV spark. STILL ramdom individual changing cyclinder misfiring under a driving load.
Fuel pressure/volumn testing (both fine) and the gasoline smelled off. Pumped out tank draining, and 5 gallon refilling with a know good gasoline refueling solved the driability problem.
Quizzed her and went back to the last station she refilled at and found they had shut down and taped off thier pumps "for problems".
Yeah! "Ya think!!

I did put this up as relevent to small gasoline genrator engine mystery-problems diagnosing. Fuel dumping and substuting should be the number THREE thing you do after spark quality/plug testing/substituting; cranking compression testing. Be aware most small four stroke air cooled engine you must electric/air drill motor power over above ~500-700 rpm to de-activate the exhaust valve holding open "easy-starting" feature to get accurate comprssion readings. This rpm activated camshaft mechanism can/and will malfuntion with too long of dirty gumming up oil changes. Malfuntion at below freezing temps with summer weight engine oils.

Regards to All actually out DOing/producing daily
Steve Unruh