dougrainer wrote:
Ivylog wrote:
Exercising generators and Diesel engines every month is a waste of time and should go under urban legends along with changing your car's oil every 3000 miles. How can all these portable generators survive without being exercised every month??? I have a portable welder that's 50 years old and it sits outdoors and it can be years between uses. Its sat so long that I have to touch the leads to a battery to re-magnetize the fields to get it to weld. I have a portable generator that's 40+ years old and gets used every 5 years...maybe. My 14 years old 10k generator has never been run every month...doing that would interfere with sorting my socks.
I agree the gas today sucks and needs to be stabilized if storing for more than 4-5 months. I would shut off the fuel supply to a gas generator...add a valve if necessary and then run it till it stops. Open the valve and crank it up next summer and Go Camping. Putting the spices in alphabetical order will be a better use of your time than running a generator every month.:S
YOU do NOT work at an Onan or RV service center. It can take less than 60 days for fuel to varnish and ruin a Onan Carb. Diesel's? never had a problem, but how hard is it to start your genset once a month for 15 to 30 minutes?. As to Portable gensets, SAME THING. Even your Lawn and Garden Gas powered equipment will be ruined in 30 to 90 days if you do not run them or add stabilizer to their fuel tanks. Doug
PS, I have a LOT more experience with these things than you do.
not my experience ?iam certainly not going out at -15 to start no stupid generator
second off I don't run my 15HP garden tractor for 6 months and for last 20 years its started every may and ran perfect ;; batterys well not so good LOL
I think where A onan gen set can have problems sooner is in extreme hot temperatures : although I live in indio during the winter and my neighbour never ran the gen set for well over a year;I had to use wd40 just to free up the float bowel system and add new fuel pump but ran like Swiss watch afterwards so one never knows for sure
