New Predator 6500W Generator, Recommendations/Tips?

[rekit]

+ 1 on the NGK's, and buy them from NGK. They were even cheaper than local places and you know they are not fake.
+1 on test running them with a load. I do every quarter.
+1 on don't shut them down with a load still on.
+1 on run the carb dry and drain it.
+1 on frequent oil changes.
A sheet of plywood or even cardboard propped up with a sawhorse between it and your home can help with the noise. Don't block cooling or exhaust.
I also spin them over a couple of times to splash some oil around before I turn on the gas, when starting them after sitting.
And non ethanol is your friend. Stabil does not help but a few months-if that.
On the magnetism issue, there are videos that can help possibly. The one I saw, the guy plugged in a 120v hand drill and spun it by hand, seemed to fix his. Gen was off, the drill backfed the gen magnets I guess.

 

[football]

I really wasn’t sure how much generator I needed, but I shopped around online for a couple hours that morning and the 6500/5500 I picked up seemed like a good middle ground on price and output. I think it’ll be more than enough for me.

I have to look into a transfer switch more. Running the furnace and A/C would be the main reasons for getting one. It was cold when the power went out this time, but not extremely cold, so we were able to manage with just a space heater and the heat that the oven gave off. But had it been much colder, it would have been a lot less comfortable. Same thing in the summer, it can get very hot and humid here and having no A/C is not a good time.

Assuming your furnace runs on gas or oil, it doesn't draw much wattage and you should be able to power it in an emergency. Lots of people cut their furnace power line and install a 15 amp regular male plug (NEMA 5-15P) , and plug it into a 15 amp female plug (NEMA 5-15R). This way in an outage, you just unplug the furnace and plug it into an extension cord. You could also backfeed the panel very easily in an emergency using a 30 amp breaker in your panel. Your power cord has 4 wires and they are very easy to wire into a panel (2 hots on the 30 amp breaker, a white wire on the neutral bus, and a ground wire on the ground bus (in an emergency, if you know what you are doing).

As for maintenance, my best advice is to DRAIN THE CARB. It has a drain screw on the carb bowl for a reason. Running it til it dies is not enough and leaves several teaspoons of gas in the carb bowl. I store my generators empty of fuel. I drain the tank. I will run regular ethanol gas through it during an outage. I will drain that. Then I will run half a gallon of ethanol free fuel through it. Then drain the carb, air dry the tank, and put it away. My stuff always start when I need it.

If it has a battery for electric start, put that on a small engine 0.8 amp battery tender.

 

[4wd]

Did the first oil change today. Ran it for about 5 minutes to warm it up then drained it. It was very metallic, as expected.
View attachment 328718View attachment 328719
Put one quart of STP conventional 10W30 in, I’ll probably run this for 5-10 hours and then change it and switch to a synthetic.
View attachment 328720
I also swapped the Torch spark plug for an NGK BPR6ES.
View attachment 328721View attachment 328722

Yup, have seen that many times with Chonda motors - your plan is on track!

 

[NavyVet88]

Yeah the manual claims 30 hours for break-in but that seems excessive to me. I was thinking more like 5-10 max. I was planning on conventional for break-in then synthetic after.

I recently a month and a half ago bought a Generac GP6700E from Lowe’s for the whole power outage stuff myself. The manual, for it says the break-in oil should be changed at the 20 hour mark. I checked the dipstick at 3 1/2 hours and there was a lot of shiny metallic glitter at the bottom of the dipstick. I changed the oil out with a quart of Quaker State 5W-30 conventional and I’m gonna run it till about seven hours and then change it again. 30 hours seems very excessive even the 20 hours on mine seemed very excessive, but I think it’s cheap enough insurance to drain out the 1 quart of oil and fill with fresh oil.

 

[MaximumMini]

Ethanol free fuels only....and always add Stabil Marine 360...The BLUE stuff only.
(If easy, trouble free starts are important to you over time)

I leave my pressure washer, mowers and other gas powered gear out in the deep south florida heat and humidity year round and I have yet to have any of them fail to start up every time due to a fuel or carburetion issue.

If I forget to do this...i can count on needing a new carb very soon especially with ethanol fuels.

 

[FordFETruck]

Where are you guys getting those magnetic dipsticks? I've taken and drilled a counter bore in the end drain plug for a small rare earth magnet on several small engines and that works great also. I've had a couple of Honda clones, a predator 212 that was clean after its third oil change and a no name 420CC off aliexpress that I've changed once so far but didn't look bad, I built a big pressure washer with that one. I've had a couple Honda GC190s that shed like crazy also it took 4 or 5 oil changes to clean those ones out and I tore one down that was babied because it never ran right and I could never make it run right so I scrapped it, the thing looked like crap inside. Cylinder had a lot of scuffs from debris and the rod looked like it had been hot and could see their spiral flute reamer marks in the rod big end on top of it all.

I've got a 1999 companion 5500 watt with a 10HP flathead B&S my parents bought for the Y2K scare. Could have used it a few times over the years with power outages but its only been used twice. The break in oil ran for 29 hours the second time it was used but it looked pretty good for a break in.

 

[JimPghPA]

Here's some tips for yinz:

A great way to store these single cylinder gasoline engines is to run the tank dry until the engine stops. Put TruFuel in the tank swish it around, run that out also until it stops. Open the air cleaner and spray WD-40 down the carb with choke opened, spray the little hole(s) for the carburetor bowl breather with WD - 40, try to start it, it might run a brief time on the WD - 40.

If it has an easy to use carburator bowl drain, drain it and then close that drain.

Pull the rope slowly and when you feal the increase requirement of compression, stop there because in that part of the cycle both intake and exhaust valve are closed, so both valve springs are not in full compression.

If you store it long term with a valve compressed, then the spring for that valve may loose strength.

-------------

Some electrictrical tips:

Some modern forced air furnaces will sense a floating neutral and run the draft inducer at the start of a heat cycle, but then shutdown and not complete a start of heat cycle if it detects a floating neutral. If this happens, you'll have to tie neutral to the apropiate side to get that furnace to work.

If you have an electric hot water heater that is designed to run on 240 AC, and you understand electricity and 120, 120, 240, then you could run that 240 electric wster-heater on 120 to reduce the wattage required to run it. The reduced wattage will be 1/4 the 240 rating, so it will take 4 X longer time to heater the water. But the wattage draw on your generator will be 1/4 of the water-heater rating at 240 VAC. This is because at 1/2 rated voltage it draws 1/2 normal current. 1/2 current X 1/2 Voltage = 1/4 Watts.

Do not try to wire this reduced voltage feed without disconnecting both sides of the 240 wire connection to the house. If you don't understand 120, 120, 240 get an electrician to rig it for that reduced voltage, reduced power consumption use.

 

[6.7 CTD]

Where are you guys getting those magnetic dipsticks? I've taken and drilled a counter bore in the end drain plug for a small rare earth magnet on several small engines and that works great also. I've had a couple of Honda clones, a predator 212 that was clean after its third oil change and a no name 420CC off aliexpress that I've changed once so far but didn't look bad, I built a big pressure washer with that one. I've had a couple Honda GC190s that shed like crazy also it took 4 or 5 oil changes to clean those ones out and I tore one down that was babied because it never ran right and I could never make it run right so I scrapped it, the thing looked like crap inside. Cylinder had a lot of scuffs from debris and the rod looked like it had been hot and could see their spiral flute reamer marks in the rod big end on top of it all.

I've got a 1999 companion 5500 watt with a 10HP flathead B&S my parents bought for the Y2K scare. Could have used it a few times over the years with power outages but its only been used twice. The break in oil ran for 29 hours the second time it was used but it looked pretty good for a break in.

https://genexhaust.com/

Got the magnetic one for my Champion from the site above. I got the one for my Wen from Amazon.

 

[JimPghPA]

Put a power cord on your furnace and install a power outlet near it to plug it into for normal use. Then to run the furnace from a generator just unplug it and plug it into an extension cord from the generator.

I used a cord from a dead air-conditioner. The furnace only draws 4 Amps.

I also made a 1 ft. extension cord that ties neutral to Gnd. I have the furnace always connected to house Gnd.via that Romex to the power outlet box. I put that 1 ft. cord with neutral to Gnd. tie in-between the extension cord and furnace plug when using my inverter that runs from my car to power the furnace.