Generator Blowing Black Smoke
Here's another issue I'm having besides my furnace... :)
My generator... an Onan Gold Marquis 5500, is blowing black smoke intermittently. It didn't run for the better part of six months because I'd fire it up, it'd run until it was time to produce a load, and then it'd die. I had a carb guy come out and look at it. He cleaned the carburetor and then decided I had a problem with the fuel line at the gas tank because it wasn't getting fuel. I paid him his $50 and he went his way.
I decided to test that theory by buying a gallon of gas and running my own line. So I pulled the line off the back of the Onan fuel pump and found it POURING gas out of it. Interesting, it shouldnt be doing that. So I reconnected it and fired up the generator and it ran fine. Turns out the gas cap was off.. I had removed it just recently to put some stabilizer in the tank (though I never did because I didn't find the bottle of it), but never screwed the cap all the way back on. So I'm assuming my gas camp has a bad vent and dumbass didn't figure that out.
So anyway... it ran, and ran fine for maybe a 90 sec to two minutes, then would blow black smoke for thirty seconds, then go back to normal again. This would happen non-stop. Figuring the gas was probably old, I pumped it all out (12 gallons worth) and then dumped in five gallons of fresh plus some water remover/stabilizer/etc stuff.
Fired it back up... runs exactly as before. 90 seconds of just fine followed by 30 seconds of lower RPM and black smoke. Then back to normal.
I'm guessing at this point maybe it's still just getting what's left of the bad gas in the bottom of the tank and the fuel line? It's had a total of maybe two hours of run time since the gas change.
BTW, when the generator is running, I put on the A/C and a space heater to provide a decent electrical load. It continues to produce power during the slow-down, but every now and then my UPS will bleep, indicating it's not happy with the power quality.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
My generator... an Onan Gold Marquis 5500, is blowing black smoke intermittently. It didn't run for the better part of six months because I'd fire it up, it'd run until it was time to produce a load, and then it'd die. I had a carb guy come out and look at it. He cleaned the carburetor and then decided I had a problem with the fuel line at the gas tank because it wasn't getting fuel. I paid him his $50 and he went his way.
I decided to test that theory by buying a gallon of gas and running my own line. So I pulled the line off the back of the Onan fuel pump and found it POURING gas out of it. Interesting, it shouldnt be doing that. So I reconnected it and fired up the generator and it ran fine. Turns out the gas cap was off.. I had removed it just recently to put some stabilizer in the tank (though I never did because I didn't find the bottle of it), but never screwed the cap all the way back on. So I'm assuming my gas camp has a bad vent and dumbass didn't figure that out.
So anyway... it ran, and ran fine for maybe a 90 sec to two minutes, then would blow black smoke for thirty seconds, then go back to normal again. This would happen non-stop. Figuring the gas was probably old, I pumped it all out (12 gallons worth) and then dumped in five gallons of fresh plus some water remover/stabilizer/etc stuff.
Fired it back up... runs exactly as before. 90 seconds of just fine followed by 30 seconds of lower RPM and black smoke. Then back to normal.
I'm guessing at this point maybe it's still just getting what's left of the bad gas in the bottom of the tank and the fuel line? It's had a total of maybe two hours of run time since the gas change.
BTW, when the generator is running, I put on the A/C and a space heater to provide a decent electrical load. It continues to produce power during the slow-down, but every now and then my UPS will bleep, indicating it's not happy with the power quality.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
