Here is a story I sure you can relate to. My wife and I live in a fairly remote area in upstate NY. We lose our electricity numerous times a year that we have a whole house generator. I also own a 4,000 watt portable generator as a backup. I had not run thIs generator in a few years, so a month or so ago, I pulled the carb to clean it out, reinstalled and when I started it the engine went right to full throttle with no governor to control it. Fortunately, I was right there to shut it down before any damage occurred. I’m not sure what happened but figured that I installed the carb to governor linkage wrong. I pulled it off and reinstalled it, not really finding out what I had done wrong. This time I tested it with a drill and it ran perfect.
It wasn’t a week later that our electricity went out about an hour before I usually get up and my auto start generator did not start. I thought to myself the noise would probably have kept me up anyway so I might as well go back to sleep and I would deal with it when I got up, knowing I had my back up generator to make my pot of coffee. I didn’t sleep because my mind was thinking about all of the possible reasons why the generator did not start.
When I got up, I pulled out my portable generator, 100’ extension cord, removed a screen so I could run it thru the window and ran the cord next to the coffee pot. I added the water and coffee and went out to start the generator. It started on one pull and sounded great. As soon as I plugged in the coffee pot the generator rev’ed up and immediately went to full throttle with no governor control. Now, realizing what was about to happen, I started racing out of the house to shut it down, but This time I was not so lucky. A few moments later it died. I pulled the pull starter to see if I could tell what had happened and it had no compression. Well I wasn’t going to get any electricity out of that generator so I turned my attention to the whole house generator. I tried starting it on manual and it didn’t make any noises whatsoever. I tested the battery with a multimeter for voltage and it read just under 13 volts. I checked the control fuses and they were all good. I gave up and went inside to look for percolator coffee pot to heat on our gas stove. I got it all set to go and the electricity came back on.
After having my coffee I went back outside, wound up the 100’ extension cord, put the screen back on and looked at the portable generator again to diagnose the issue. After pulling the valve cover, I found one of the valve keepers had cracked in half which released the spring. That design did not have the top washer and the two keeper half's like we have in our Stovebolts, but instead a single washer that was slotted like a keyhole. I wasn’t able to buy that single washer because they changed the design to the conventional washer with two keepers. I had to buy a whole kit that replaced everything.
I called a service company that specializes in whole house generators, to come out and repair the generator, figuring it was a control board circuit issue. He was there for fifteen minutes. The battery was bad. It showed 13 volts until you placed a load on it. Boy did I feel stupid. I felt even worse when he handed me the bill for over 200 dollars for the service call. And I still needed to buy the battery!
