Generator will not start

I had the same problem, generator would run as long as the start switch was being held in. Never did discovery the cause of the real problem. However I did do the following and got the generator working. I plugged into shore power for a few minutes to check and be sure every other thing but the generator was working and then disconnected the shore plug and tried starting the generator, it worked. Why I am not sure, but I had this wild idea was it possible that the automatic transfer switch could possibly have gotten hung up and prevented the generator running. Remember the default position is shore power and most ATS's have a 20 second generator delay built into them.