I have a Champion 3100W RV ready Portable Generator that I bought last Spring for extended dry camping excursions. I'm not sure how to store it for the brutal winters we have here in the North. I called Champion and was on hold for an hour. I emailed over a week ago and still haven't received an answer so hopefully someone here can help. I keep it in our unheated shed and now that winter is approaching, should I keep the supplied trickle charger that comes with it plugged in all winter or should I make sure the battery is fully charged and just remove the Pos or Neg cable from it's post and call it good? The shed does have electricity. Thanks.

No to the trickle charger, yes to a battery maintainer.

i would think that as long as the battery was FULLY charged before storageit would be OKlike any other electric start tool, garden tractor, riding mower etc..

Hi,My kipor generator battery lasted from 2002 until 2009 when I made the mistake of replacing the generator with a boiley.

If you can change out the battery if it goes bad, can you remove it and bring it inside during the winter

What a calamity of errors. So as I'm taking the battery out of the generator, one of the nuts that you screw the battery cable bolts to comes out of the place in the battery post where it normally sits. It bounces on the ground and into a storm drain where it can't be retrieved. I try calling Champion one more time. Success! I get a nice guy who tries to help but in the end says, they can't sell be a nut but if I want to buy a new battery for $52, the nut and bolts come with it. I respectfully decline. Off to the Big Box store I go to get a new nut. Nope, can't get a new nut. HD doesn't have the right size out where I can try screwing the bolt I brought with me to it. Not a 1/4" nut but close. Must be Metric. Open the drawer where they keep the Metric nuts. They're individually packaged. Is it an M5 or an M6? Don't know for sure. Both look like they might work but can't rip one open to see if it threads on the bolt for sure because it wouldn't be right to do so and two employees are helping other customers literally 5 feet away from me anyway. So I buy 2-1/4" x 20 x 1/2" bolts and corresponding nuts from the imperial section of nuts and bolts. Back home, I try to insert the nut in the opening on the battery post. Nope, doesn't fit. Too wide. I grasp one of the nuts in a pair of vice grips and off to my Ridgid sander I go. I grind down two sides equally until it fits. Ok, grind the other one down. Ok. Problem solved. I put the battery on the battery tender. Oops, forgot to add fuel stabilizer to the generator. Ok, stabilizer added. Better start it up so the mixture gets through the lines and to the carb. Don't want that thing gumming up on me. Ok, battery is out of the generator so have to pull start it. Never done that before. Always used the electric start or remote with electric start. No problem. I pull and pull and pull some more. It won't start. I go take the battery off the tender and hook it up. At least I know the nuts and bolts work fine to attach the cables. I fire up the generator and let it run for 30 minutes. Ok, that should do it. When all said and done and I had the generator put away for the winter and the battery on a tender, it was only 2 hours after I started for a job that should take 5 minutes. Good thing it was 50 degrees today in Western NY or I would have been majorly P.O'd. I hate when these kinds of things happen!!!

Portable Generator Battery | Good Sam Community

23 Replies

2oldman
Explorer II
Nov 26, 2017
RobWNY wrote:
Leaded gas. None of this ethanol **** that ruins engines today.
As post above says, try to get no-ethanol premium, because leaded ain't comin' back, ever. Even with DJT in office.

My Hondas get drained even for a month's storage. Takes 10-15 pulls for first startup, but that's better than a trip to the shop.
TurnThePage
Explorer
Nov 26, 2017
Maybe as mentioned, temp and humidity play a roll, I don't know. We live in a relatively dry area, that gets plenty cold in the winter. I've used plain old Sta-bil and non-ethanol premium octane in all of my smaller engines for over 20 years, with out ever draining the fuel. Most of them end up stored 5 or 6 months over the winter. Some don't get used for years (my chainsaw, or gas weed wacker) yet still start easily and work fine. I just sold a 12 year old Yamaha EF2800i generator that still ran like new.
RobWNY
Explorer
Nov 26, 2017
I'm old enough to remember how engines started right up after several months of not running too. Leaded gas. None of this ethanol **** that ruins engines today. I don't know if either way of storing engines is right or wrong. It's probably all a bunch of hogwash.
Tvov
Explorer II
Nov 26, 2017
RobWNY wrote:
SaltiDawg wrote:
I've never before heard the suggestion that running an engine out of fuel can cause engine damage... unloaded generator, of course.

Before propane conversion, I used to add Fuel stabilizer AND run it out and drain bowl. Thought was that stabilizer in the tiny amount still in carb would help.

Here's one link to the theory about engine damage by running it dry for storage. https://www.goldeagle.com/tips-tools/lawn-mower-storage-why-draining-fuel-tank-mistake/

Well... I sort of disagree with that link. Even in that link it says that some manufacturers recommend draining the fuel out of small engines.

It is also weird how in that link they talk about hard starting if there is no fuel in the carb... well, yea! You use the choke, or push the fuel bulb, to get the fuel running.

I am talking long term storage, months at least. If you think you might be starting up an engine within a month or so, fuel stabilizer will probably work fine.

I am only going by what has worked for me in New England. Equipment is routinely put away in November, and not brought until March, April or even May of the next year. Decades ago you could just park small engines with full fuel tanks in the fall and they would start right up in the spring. Not with this stuff they call fuel today - you have to do something for long term storage.

If just adding something like Stabil fuel stabilizer has worked for you, keep doing it! Whatever works.

Almost makes a person wonder if the "fuel stabilizer industry" made political contributions, lol!
RobWNY
Explorer
Nov 26, 2017
SaltiDawg wrote:
I've never before heard the suggestion that running an engine out of fuel can cause engine damage... unloaded generator, of course.

Before propane conversion, I used to add Fuel stabilizer AND run it out and drain bowl. Thought was that stabilizer in the tiny amount still in carb would help.

Here's one link to the theory about engine damage by running it dry for storage. https://www.goldeagle.com/tips-tools/lawn-mower-storage-why-draining-fuel-tank-mistake/
MEXICOWANDERER
Explorer
Nov 25, 2017
The warmer and/or wetter the weather the faster gas decides to go sour.

So in the desert at -40F/C with 5% humidity stored gasoline lasts a lot longer than it would in Miami or Honolulu.

And alcohol just makes things worse IMHO. My son-in-law's 50-1 dosed gasoline lasts a lot longer than undosed gasoline. Not sure how that works...
SaltiDawg
Explorer
Nov 25, 2017
I've never before heard the suggestion that running an engine out of fuel can cause engine damage... unloaded generator, of course.

Before propane conversion, I used to add Fuel stabilizer AND run it out and drain bowl. Thought was that stabilizer in the tiny amount still in carb would help.
2oldman
Explorer II
Nov 25, 2017
RobWNY wrote:
Oops, forgot to add fuel stabilizer to the generator. Ok, stabilizer added. Better start it up so the mixture gets through the lines and to the carb. Don't want that thing gumming up on me.
Now you can go back out there and drain the fuel you just added stabilizer to.
RobWNY wrote:
It all depends on whose reports you believe.
Or what the owner's manual suggests.
Thunder_Mountai
Explorer II
Nov 25, 2017
I've got a snow tractor, a camping trailer, generators, ATVs, classic car, a truck that sits all winter, tractor mower, etc. I just put Sta-bil in the gas tanks and a battery maintainer on them. No problem with any of them.
RobWNY
Explorer
Nov 25, 2017
Tvov, there would have been no reason to add the stabilizer to it if I ran the generator out of fuel but there's two schools of thought on whether to drain the fuel out or add stabilizer and leave it. I've done it both ways. Neither caused me any issue. One theory is that if you leave fuel in the machine, it may gum up the carb anyway. The other is if you run it completely out of fuel it can cause damage to the engine. I don't know if either is true and wouldn't say either way was right or wrong. It all depends on whose reports you believe.