MEP 803A Surging, Not holding frequency

Conatus said:

something i wanted to explore was the droop adjustment in the manual. Do you think this could have anything to do with what i am experiencing.
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Of course. But I would make sure I worked all the wet stacking out before I fooled with the droop. Does it look like someone else has fooled with it? If not, then that the last thing I would check. First fuel supply and then wet stacking.

If you are clearing out some wet stack, get a bottle of seafoam into that tank, and load it down.

Put some seafoam in and let er chooch for an hour with a loose gas cap.
https://youtu.be/npZKsrXYCcI
tightened up the cap and let it chooch for another half hour
https://youtu.be/Rr9rpVzBFo0
if it keeps running like this i'll be really happy about how i spent my money. I'm going to let it cool down then explore the droop adjustment.

When under a good load, do you still have smoke and carbon coming out of the exhaust? A half hour is not much run time when getting rid of crud.

I did not see a grounding rod or cable. The TM shows how to and why grounding is an important safety protocol.

Guyfang said:

When under a good load, do you still have smoke and carbon coming out of the exhaust? A half hour is not much run time when getting rid of crud.

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After an hour at 75% load, no smoke and no back carbon i ran it for an hour and a half loaded down yesterday.

So definitely ground that thing before you do anything else. Secondarily, consider running it at almost full load for the entire tank (and seafom) to allow everything to clean up. You will have a better running machine after it, I can almost promise.

Light in the Dark said:

So definitely ground that thing before you do anything else. Secondarily, consider running it at almost full load for the entire tank (and seafom) to allow everything to clean up. You will have a better running machine after it, I can almost promise.

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Hello Did you solve this situation? Thanks

Hello Did you solve this situation? Thanks

I never noticed mention of changing the fuel filters and cleaning the pump screens. I would definitely do that.. especially after running it hard with a solvent in the tank.

Otherwise, looks to be running good. Service it out.

Conatus said:

something i wanted to explore was the droop adjustment in the manual. Do you think this could have anything to do with what i am experiencing.
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Question for the experts on this droop control. What exactly is it doing and why would turning it towards less droop ever cause an issue? It states to never turn more than 1 turn at a time.

It's essentially adjusting the leverage of the spring that counteracts the force of the spinning weights in the governor. If you make it too sensitive the engine speed will surge up and down because the governor overshoots its mark and then quickly reacts in the opposite direction, this cycle happens continuously, causing the engine speed to be erratic, surging up and down.
If you notice either the engine surging at constant or no load or an excessive fluctuation in RPM when a load it dropped off, your droop is set too sensitive.
a 3Hz droop from no load to full load is about as sensitive as you can go.

And if you go too far the other way, the generator doesn't respond well to changes in load, so there is a sweet spot in middle. As @Ray70 wrote it is about 3Hz or so of droop.

All the best,

2Pbfeet