Forum Discussion
- I hope he had a transfer switch at his home that he turned off to isolate his home from the incoming utility power before setting up the generator on the front porch. Otherwise I'm glad I wasn't a lineman working in the area. Dangerous stuff.?
- 2oldman, It was the Harbor Freight Predator. It was much noisier than I had expected and rattled. The HF ad compared their cheapo to the Honda but it really wasn't comparable. I ended up buying a Ryobi 2200 watt inverter generator from Home Depot on sale for the same price HF got for theirs on sale. We only use if for boondocking and love the way it idles down while providing enough power to top-off the batteries, run the refrigerator and power the TV & satellite system plus warm our bed by powering our electric blanket. It runs for hours on a gallon of gas. I used to bring a 5 gallon gas can with us to make up what the on board Onan generator that used a gallon of gas an hour under the same loads while spinning at a constant speed (3600 rpm) and making enough noise you and the neighbors knew it was running.
From my experience, any generator under maximum load is going to sound bad.
There's no excuse why Onan hasn't come out with a new inverter model generator like most manufacturers have instead of continuing to make the same tired 50 year old constant speed design they are. They're way late to market with them. - Generac sounds pretty bad. Yeah, it's smaller, but what a racket. Sounds more like an open-frame generator.
DFord wrote:
Which brand?
I bought one of the 2000 watt models two years ago . - Its not a "poor" test. The Predator is very quiet under an AC load. He doesn't claim he proved anything but that.
- I think it's a pretty good test. It's an average Joe comparing what he has and what he can afford. It demonstrates nicely how quiet the big Predator is. The fact that the little gen is maxed out is a great thing to point out to the novice public looking for a generator.
- Very poor test. He's comparing a Predator 3500 watt generator and the Generac ix2000 generator. The Generac is probably maxed out and running full bore compared to the partially loaded Predator.
- I bought one of the 2000 watt modles two years ago in Yuma, AZ when my on board Onan acted up at Quartzsite. I didn't care for it at all and returned it within a month. I had to take a restocking fee hit on it of almost $90 but was glad to rid of it. I hope anyone else that buys one of these things has a better experience with it. The more I buy at Harbor Freight that just doesn't work out for me, the less I go there.
