Honda EU6500 oil drip

[henni]

We have several EU6500 inverters, both in business and private use, for various purposes. All of these generators have less than 20 hours on the LCD display panel and start and run like new. All are started and run at least once every 2 months. All have oil changed every 2 hours of runtime, Mobil 1 10w30.

A few of these have a very small quantity oil drip that appears as a few drops of oil from the very bottom of the unit. There is a metal plate in the center bottom, it has a small pre-drilled hole and oil comes as just a drop or two every week, very very tiny amount.

Is there some kind of connection to the location, some known issue of what may be the source or cause of this drip, some kind of seal or something else that may be the reason ?

 

[tig1]

Design flaw? Why so many generators that arn't used?

 

[meep]

2 hour oci? frequent changes---- occassional spillage from filling??

 

[JR]

Two hour oci's run them 100hr oci or two plus year . I dont have honda anymore. I have a tecumseh ohh195 3.5k genorater. It gets a few hours here and there. Factory calls for 50hr oci. I have ran syn 5w20, usual oci is 125hrs. It has over thousand hours for sure. No smoke, leaks, or burn of oil. Burn off at oil drain usually less then two fluid ounces.

Ken

Ps
all my gensets are excercised every

 

[henni]

The 2 hour oil change interval on most of these comes from the Honda manual to change every 6 months OR 100 hours. Since these run 2 hours every 6 months, they are changed every 6 months at 2 hours runtime.

Same with Honda cars, oil change interval is based on the MM indicator, miles OR every 12 months regardless of miles driven.

 

[TSollecito]

This is basically the same exact thing that is happening to my EU7000. Doesn’t seem to leak when sitting. Didn’t really leak for the first hour of use during this last outage due to a tropical storm but will form a minor drip when running for longer. The drip is small and didn’t even fall to hit the pan but it’s there and I wiped it off and it came back again later. I’m sure it will eventually get large enough to fall if it ran long enough. I just don’t want it to be something worse down the road if I ignore it. It’s basically on the bottom center near a predrilled hole it kind of collects on the ridges. I can see it from looking up through the oil change rubber plug on the bottom casing. Is it too small to drop off for service or should I not let it get worse. There’s only 50 hours on it. I hate things getting taken apart but I don’t want it to get worse when I depend on it. But maybe it’s easier to diagnose if it was a little worse.

 

[Best F100]

Henni / TSollecito,

I own the older Honda EU6500is generator with about 3,800 hours on her. Bought for cheap with high hours on it. It used to smoke excessively. Had the engine completely rebuilt with new pistons, valves and various engine parts. Runs strong and clean now.

On occasion, I too found a drop or two on the floor. A couple of simple oil leak sources come to mind, that I would try to rule out:

1) On some engines, using Mobil 1 30 wt, will find a way to leak past the oil plug or seals to the ground. I was using Mobil 1 0W30
year round. I am now using Delo HDEO. 15W30 Severe Duty from my stash or 5W40.

2) I replaced my stock oil plug and washer with a Drainzit oil drain hose. No more chances of stripping the drain plug threads, or
spilling oil during oil change. Google Drainzit oil drain hose and watch the video for more information.

So far, my floor is dry. However, I need to run this generator more to see if I am still having oil drop spills.

 

[henni]

Our solution was installing / replacing / oil drain plugs with Qwikvalves and a small extension which is connected to a permanently installed teflon tube. Makes also easy no-tools oil change possible. We use whatever 10W40 oil was/is on sale at AAP, Autozone, Walmart etc or whatever is in the $1 bin which often ends up being the dash40 weight oil variants.

 

[TSollecito]

I’ll have to check those out. Any reason I should stop using Mobil 1 Synthetic 10w30? Once I switched to synthetic I can’t go back to conventional right?

 

[Ride_Red]

That's and old myth.
You can switch between synthetic and conventional whenever you like.

 

[meep]

That's and old myth.
You can switch between synthetic and conventional whenever you like.

Close. it’s very old information but not a myth. Early adopters in the 80s absolutely could run into trouble here. I did it and lost 2 cam and 1 crank seal. Had no idea back then. Earlier syn oils if I understand were type IV, which didn’t go back and forth kindly. Most normal syns today are a type III, and if there’s IV in it, it’s generally a mix with other components which are kinder to seals.

while not relevant today, it did use to be an issue. Some of us also got suckered by slick50 too, but that’s maybe for a different day.

m

 

[TSollecito]

Just ordered some Amsoil Small Engine for the generator and snowblower. Heard good things about it and will use this going forward if it works out well