new westinghouse generator 3700/4500

Yeah, it's a real undercut. Selling out.

Plumb for carpenter tools. Remember the triangle?
I stuck by Bryant brand until it was bought out.
Ersin Multicore, perhaps the finest solder ever made.
And American made fasteners.
KATO makes only near megawatt size generators. Basler regulators were garbage while Delco reigned supreme. LIMA generators were a fine generator. Disappeared. LeRoy Sommers is absolute garbage. Onan, without corruption, would disappear.

Landyacht is the owner of a Transpo voltage regulator derived from scribbling on one of Vince's tablecloths at a restaurant overlooking Noyo Harbor. Frank Oropeza and I belted out perhaps seven or eight radical concepts and bless his heart he came through on production. Most of the basic concepts came from pulse width modulation (my idea) and MOSFET finals (his idea). No voltage droop and near 0% warranty failures. Adjustable voltage (his concept), and the masterpiece 911 series of voltage regulators that are virtually blow up proof. But the Chinese are incapable of producing the self-excited 911-04 because Texas Instruments will not OK the chip for foreign use.

I am having problems accessing mil-spec switches the NOS is running dry. The Chinese have to buy jet engines from the Russians and Russia has junked ski-jump design aircraft carriers after one too many Flankers were photographed hanging off the bowsprit.

Russia CAN NOT MANAGE to manufacture many superior quality items. one exception is the SOVTUBE. When transistors were unattainable they were forced to design halfway decent vacuum tubes or be threatened with a Siberian future.

America could produce an overhead cam direct port ECU closed cooling system loop generator with a lifetime brush-less alternator inverter that could be half as loud as a Honda while using 2/3rds the fuel. But it'll never happen.

Mex,

Folks are used to the quality of old time brands and often do not realize that pretty much every single old time brand the company that was behind that brand name no longer exists.

Electronics names like RCA, Philco, Sylvania, Zenith, yeah, the company behind them, GONE! But yet the names still persist due to licensing!

Plenty more examples out there if you dig around.

If you are going to buy a name, do your homework, find out who owns the company name then find out if they offer service and parts.

Big ticket items like a $1000 gen, it would stink if the gen fails the first day or 1 day after the 90 day warranty and all you have is a phone number that is disconnected or worse, only a website which no longer exists..

At least with Harbor Freight, you KNOW right upfront that they do not "service" GENS.

They do not stock or typically offer the option to buy replacement gen parts from them, but hey at least for the first 30 days they will exchange gens and if you feel brave about it, you can also take them up for an additional fee a 1 yr and some cases multiple yr REPLACEMENT of the gen.

Dang that sounds similar to Nestle who went after Hershey with blood in its eye.

Hostile Takeover.

Whatever pittance it did I emailed Nestle and informed them that if the takeover succeeded that would be the last time I permitted a Nestle product to cross my threshold. Another drop in the bucket.

American investors are treating this country like a two-bit hoe.

It seems one of the few areas to be proud of our Caterpillar and Boeing / Lockheed. Then there is Concorde Lifeline and the Canadian Rolls & Surrette. We used to have Premier supertanium bolts -- 200,000 PSI and it wasn't a ploy. Insanely strong bolts. Now stuff is all landfill grade. Garbage fit perfectly for the average consumer.

Want an excellent car? Try Great Britain or Germany. A stupid fan? EB PABST Germany. Electronics tools? Wiha or other German manufacture. LED? CREE. Knives Germany or Japan. Michelin, Bridgestone?

Now it's Siemens for industry giant electrical.

USA the land of dishwashers, middle-management paper pushers, and speculators. Service-oriented. The only manufacturing expertize is for defense or a byproduct financed by online sales of products made overseas. petrochemical is an exception.

Few in this forum truly understand how vulnerable we have become. "Baaaaaaaaaaa!"

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Westinghouse manufactures some of the world's largest hydroelectric generators -- like one hundred megawatts. The vastness between these monsters and small generators is so large that even if consumers should grow violently opposed to Westinghouse as a brand name it would little affect the parent that signed an agreement that Westinghouse would not sue them for brand name misappropriation. That's exactly how it works.

Mex,

The "Westinghouse" of old that you are aware of is not the "Westinghouse" of today.

Back in the late 1990s Westinghouse started to spin off and/or sell off parts and pieces until (WABCO/WESCO. Westinghouse office furniture systems, Communications (IE "Group W" which was a massive group of CBS TV/Radio affiliates like KDKA), TVSC which was a huge satellite video/audio up/downlink system, Unimation which was a robotics division and so on) the ONLY thing that was left was the NUCLEAR POWER group.

NO BODY wanted that hot potato and eventually Toshiba Corp (yeah the Toshiba the chip maker, hard drive make, that Toshiba) thought that at the rock bottom price of $5.4 BILLION would somehow be a good fit in their company in 2006. That purchase completely ended the offical Westinghouse Corp..

That purchase has continued to haunt Toshiba to the point a yr ago or so they were considering selling off their money making chips/memory/hd division to prop up the company..

The Nuclear division ONLY designs and services commercial nuclear power plants is bleeding money out everywhere..

They are a former shell of what they were..

The CONSUMER SIDE is nothing more than a shell corp that simply sells the Westinghouse name to be slapped on anything that may make a profit. They simply license the name to the highest bidder. They do not make nor service consumer equipment.. That is farmed out to third party folks if you are lucky that they still support it..

The reason I know a lot about the "W" is back in the late 1980s I worked at the downtown Pittsburgh HQ for a short stint..

After the Toshiba purchase, they moved the Nuclear division out of the city of Pittsburgh and since then it has been moved another time to Warrendale PA which is about 30 minutes north of Pittsburgh..

My Company has a office building so close to the Westinghouse building you can spit on it..

Westinghouse has laid off thousands of Nuclear division personal over the last 3yrs that they have too much office space and are now trying to sublet the space.. Some of the local engineers that lost their jobs have been hired by my company..

This is why I caution folks considering a Westinghouse gen, it is nothing special it is simply a rebadged Chinese import Honda clone gen. It is not designed, made or sourced in the US and is 100% Chinese parts assembled by Chinese people. Try finding a dealer or parts department for repairs or parts. At nearly $1000 there most likely IS better Chinese import gens at lower price points (Champion was mentioned, they do have parts/service support).

I think the Honda engines are made in China too. And many of the generic Chinese generators use literal clones of those.

......I solved the problem by getting a Honda.....

A quip from my Navy days...

You may think it's screwed up if it's GE
But you can be sure if it's Westinghouse

Westinghouse manufactures some of the world's largest hydroelectric generators -- like one hundred megawatts. The vastness between these monsters and small generators is so large that even if consumers should grow violently opposed to Westinghouse as a brand name it would little affect the parent that signed an agreement that Westinghouse would not sue them for brand name misappropriation. That's exactly how it works.

Down here folks purchased condominiums in famous resort locations. The hype was so hysterical ("A ***** Development") that people who wanted in on a half million dollar tower condo had to pay 100% up-front. Steel towers had been erected. The photos of *****'s existing works in the USA were everywhere in the sales office. Then work stopped, the companies went bankrupt, the losers demanded their money back from ***** and he responded: "Who? Me?". And the fact that he made money signing agreements not to sue allowed him to slither away.

No this is not about anything other than how the name borrowing works. Nor the surname of the first alpine climber to surmount the world's tallest mountain.

The subject is generator brand names. And the Chinese are acutely aware that a translated "Fierce Warrior Butterfly" ain't where it's at.

theoldwizard1 wrote:


Not sure how you get parts for a HF generator.

you call them just like everyone else.

i have bought parts in the past from HF

Gdetrailer wrote:
In essence, they ARE THROW AWAY DEVICES, when they die they become huge doorstops unless you can find another junked one that doesn't have the same problem. You better be willing and able to diagnose, source parts and repair it yourself.

The exception to this seems to be Champion. Yes, they are made in China, but they have support and parts network in the US.

Not sure how you get parts for a HF generator.