I got the $149 Lifan inverter generator

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From home depot. The online instructions indicate it's only good for 500 watt continuous, 600 surge but my paper one reads 600/700! Other inconsistencies are my paper instructions read a 5 hour run time at full load vs the Depot ad reading 3 hr at 50%. My manual demands oil changes every 40 hours while the online one has an odd table about higher temperatures needing shorter times.

Other inconsistencies are the manual demanding "10w30w" oil while a sticker on the device wants 15w40.

I broke it in for 30 minutes until it ran out of gas then put 213 grams of gasoline in 'er. This is 0.07513 gallons or 20 cents for you nerds. . I'm running it with a 360 watt load on eco-mode with a kill-a-watt meter and video camera to see what I get out of it: Got .22 KwH out of that fuel or 2.93 kWH per gallon. I pay 19 cents/ KwH for shore power or $1.07/ KwH for this.

Other impressions: It's pretty stupid to need a screwdriver to remove a side panel to check the oil.

Device came with clear plastic "aquarium tubing" in a Wye with two of the three sides connected to absolutely nothing.

It claimed to take 20 oz of oil but I could only get 10-12 in there before it overflowed. It comes with a little tube (straw) that screws into the oil fill so you can tip it and drain the old oil without it catching in its little plastic beauty cover.

It's quiet but not mega-quiet. Rated at 58 dB. It freaks me out hearing the engine change pitch for eco-mode. Makes a clean 60.1 Hz.

I put a hair dryer on it and briefly boosted it to a 710 watt load (1/2 second) then back down. Persisting with this load kicks on the overload protection which cuts the outputs and the machine needs "rebooting" to fix this. I have not yet plugged my fridge in but think it can handle it.

The 40cc engine is a darling little thing that looks like it was assembled with grey stove cement/ RTV instead of gaskets. Its pull string start is a two-finger affair like you'd find on a weedwhacker. It starts just fine with choke and goes to unchoked graciously in a few seconds. Valve adjustment is listed as maintenance after a couple hundred hours. The front panel is smart with a few LEDs and nice workmanship on the breakers and outlets.

Thing has a 12V/8A out for charging batteries which might be something lazy me uses getting the plow truck out of the woods next fall.

In short, it's no Honda in build quality, but the $150 kinda jumps out at you. I dumped my 2-stroke HF 900 watt model on craigslist already.



 
nice.
that is a lot of discrepancies.. on important things too! Careful on the 12V as it was really high on mine.
 
Make sure you run UOA on the oil
smile.gif

Nice pictures and info.... Thanks!
 
man, if I could buy that here for the same price I'd be on my way to HD already.

Great little inverter for the price. Looking forward to hearing how it holds up.
 
Trouble in paradise!
mad.gif


She stopped making power.

I looked into it and the little female metal part inside the outlet had been pushed in by the prongs of my extension cord. I must have plugged something in 4 or 5 times already!

Jammed it back home, perhaps something that wasn't done fully to begin with. Life is good.

The "outlet command center" screws into the plastic case with a few self-tapping screws, something which would strip out if done a few times.

On the flipside now is if I find one of these at the dump it might be an easy fix.
lol.gif
 
Funny I stumbled on to this topic. Couple weeks ago I picked up a Lifan 1800 watt (2000 surge) inverter from WM for $236. (It's at $491 now - not sure what their pricing model is). Started and ran fine, but after about an hour I got a serious fuel leak. Turned out the plastic priming bulb had cracked and literally fallen off. So basically it dumped a half gallon of gas on the driveway. Lifan service is pretty nice to deal with (they actually route the calls to a company called AWS - American Warranty Service) in Texas. They sent me a new primer assembly, installing it was easier than taking the gen set to a service place.

Supposedly the warranty is 3 years, with the final 2 years parts only.

Mine has the same "dual spec" on oils, 10W30 in the book and 15W40 on the side panel sticker. I'm running Rotella 10W30.

As you say, it's not Honda, but it's 1/4 the price, at least when I bought mine.
 
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Originally Posted By: Jooksing
nice.
that is a lot of discrepancies.. on important things too! Careful on the 12V as it was really high on mine.


In general on these inverter generators with a 12 Volt output, the 12 Volt is for charging a car battery and puts out about 8 Amps, but is not regulated. So if you leave it charge too long it will overcharge the battery and damage it. Most car batteries are about 50 Amper hours meaning that an 8 amp charge rate would take about 6 hours to fully charge a battery that was completely discharged. However, you should not take the chance of overcharging a battery by trying to take it to full charge because if you overcharge a 12 Volt battery it usually damages it. If you charged a dead battery for one and a half hours it should be about 1/4 charged which should be plenty enough to start the vehicle and have no chance of overcharging. If 1/4 charge sounds on the light side leave it on for 3 hours for 1/2 charge. Either way, just do not take the chance of overcharging by charging for 6 or more hours (assuming the battery was completely discharged to begin with).

Also, because the 12 Volts can be much higher than 12 Volts when not loaded down with a car battery being charged, you probably do not want to try to power any 12 Volt device with it because the Voltage might be high enough to damage some items.
 
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Originally Posted By: Astro_Guy
Sorry, but I am having a really hard time understanding why anyone would need a 500 watt gas powered generator.


Have a daughter that plays softball in Georgia in the summer..it sure is nice to have a little generator to run a pile of fans to keep cool when you're at a tournament from sunup to well past dark. That and to charge your phones while you wait for the next game to start because they're running an hour behind schedule and you've been playing games or watching Netflix for the last hour. The smaller and quieter the better.
grin.gif
 
I have a transfer switch. During a power outage it's nice to run the internet and a few lights when I don't need the noise and fuel consumption of my "real" generator.

Charging a car battery with it is somewhat of an emergent situation in the field... bringing it from 25% to 50%. I would elegantly charge one from shore power if I had the opportunity. The 12V output I'm sure is "pulsey" as the little engine rotates.
 
Originally Posted By: JimPghPA

Also, because the 12 Volts can be much higher than 12 Volts when not loaded down with a car battery being charged, you probably do not want to try to power any 12 Volt device with it because the Voltage might be high enough to damage some items.


I did not know this and cooked my 12v "car power inverter". I was testing the 12v supply and the unit started crackling and smoking!
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
I have a transfer switch. During a power outage it's nice to run the internet and a few lights when I don't need the noise and fuel consumption of my "real" generator.

Charging a car battery with it is somewhat of an emergent situation in the field... bringing it from 25% to 50%. I would elegantly charge one from shore power if I had the opportunity. The 12V output I'm sure is "pulsey" as the little engine rotates.


That's pretty cool at that price point. Thanks for guinea pigging this for us.
grin2.gif
 
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Originally Posted By: Astro_Guy
Sorry, but I am having a really hard time understanding why anyone would need a 500 watt gas powered generator.


My use case if I had 500W is I work 100% from home and to run my computer/monitor/internet/networking equipment during a power outage. Also my 24Watt led desk lamp.

In lieu of having the generator I use a $110 UPS(uninterrupted power supply) that powers my network/internet for about 5-6hrs. My Mac Book pro self powers for around 6-7hrs. I do miss my 30" monitor during these outages.
 
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Astro_Guy
Sorry, but I am having a really hard time understanding why anyone would need a 500 watt gas powered generator.


My use case if I had 500W is I work 100% from home and to run my computer/monitor/internet/networking equipment during a power outage. Also my 24Watt led desk lamp.

In lieu of having the generator I use a $110 UPS(uninterrupted power supply) that powers my network/internet for about 5-6hrs. My Mac Book pro self powers for around 6-7hrs. I do miss my 30" monitor during these outages.


For home use though you might as well get something that can run your fridge and/or freezer too. A 2000W one is pretty good as you can still move it easily, and it still sips gas. We ran our place for 12hrs per day with the fridge, freezer, TV, internet, and computers on our EF3000ise for 3 days and I think we used 4-5 gal of gas. Its a heavy beast though, so I have to set it up.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Astro_Guy
Sorry, but I am having a really hard time understanding why anyone would need a 500 watt gas powered generator.


My use case if I had 500W is I work 100% from home and to run my computer/monitor/internet/networking equipment during a power outage. Also my 24Watt led desk lamp.

In lieu of having the generator I use a $110 UPS(uninterrupted power supply) that powers my network/internet for about 5-6hrs. My Mac Book pro self powers for around 6-7hrs. I do miss my 30" monitor during these outages.


For home use though you might as well get something that can run your fridge and/or freezer too. A 2000W one is pretty good as you can still move it easily, and it still sips gas. We ran our place for 12hrs per day with the fridge, freezer, TV, internet, and computers on our EF3000ise for 3 days and I think we used 4-5 gal of gas. Its a heavy beast though, so I have to set it up.




Our well pump is the beast requiring 240V and pulls a load when starting.
 
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Astro_Guy
Sorry, but I am having a really hard time understanding why anyone would need a 500 watt gas powered generator.


My use case if I had 500W is I work 100% from home and to run my computer/monitor/internet/networking equipment during a power outage. Also my 24Watt led desk lamp.

In lieu of having the generator I use a $110 UPS(uninterrupted power supply) that powers my network/internet for about 5-6hrs. My Mac Book pro self powers for around 6-7hrs. I do miss my 30" monitor during these outages.


For home use though you might as well get something that can run your fridge and/or freezer too. A 2000W one is pretty good as you can still move it easily, and it still sips gas. We ran our place for 12hrs per day with the fridge, freezer, TV, internet, and computers on our EF3000ise for 3 days and I think we used 4-5 gal of gas. Its a heavy beast though, so I have to set it up.




Our well pump is the beast requiring 240V and pulls a load when starting.

We have a small submersible well pump too, and I've considered tracking down a transformer to run it with our EF3000, but I haven't bothered as it might not work anyways. For a couple days, our pressure tank had enough capacity for actual clean water needs. We just filled a couple of buckets from the pond for the animals and toilet duty.
It's easy to talk yourself into "needing" the propane fueled 20kw whole home generator, but realistically, if we don't have power for a week, probably I'll be at home anyways, so playing pioneer and slugging a few buckets of water around won't be a big deal.
 
I also have a 2500 watt propane / gasoline generator for the well pump and fridge. But I'll run that 4 hours on, 6-8 off and don't like leaving that outside unattended. This lifan's cheaper and more stealthy. If I have it out of sight you might not hear it over my neighbors' beastly conventional sets.
 
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