Yup, no different than ‘exercising’ your generator a minimum of 30 minutes a month or aliens will come down and shoot it with their death ray, or you’ll be horribly murdered the very first time you sleep in a rest area.
I can tell you from personal experience that I have become religious about exercising my Onan 4BGE. Maybe some generators no longer suffer from lack of use, but the Onan 4BGE sure will.
If you go over on the Smokestak forum you will find countless posts of people coming in and asking why their generator doesn't work. About 90% of the time it's a gummed-up carb caused by letting the generator sit too long without running. There's a lot of things that cause the "gum" - things growing in the carb, "varnish", corrosion from water condensation, but the end result is that the orifices in the jets get plugged partially or fully and the generator either doesn't run at all or runs poorly. Exercising the generator once a month flushes the fuel system out with fresh gas plus the heat and agitation help keep things cleaned out.
The other problem which the 4BGE suffers from (and maybe other generators also) is that when the generator sits, the slip rings oxidize, raising the resistance between the rings and the brushes. If this resistance gets too high, it can damage the voltage regulator. This seems to me to be something that could be engineered around, so maybe some manufacturers have solved this problem. But my 30-year-old 4BGE has had this problem. Monthly running will keep the slip rings polished.
Steve
