Some of you may have read my previous post about my purchase of an 803a to bring over to the Bahamas for use as a primary power source for a house until they get power supplied.
I won the auction for the lofty sum of $375. A couple of batteries and a new relay later and I have a total of $600 into the system. It took the wisdoms of this board to get it running but it does!
Getting it to the Bahamas proved to be interesting. Obviously because of the weight, I could not just fly it over. It had to go by a barge. Moving it by barge was going to be very expensive. This is where relationships come in.
I learned that a friend of a friend had a truck he was donating, going over on a barge. I was able to get in contact with this person and was told we could put the generator in the back of the truck for the trip.
What I didn’t realize was the generator had to be at the Seaport two days later since they did not know when it was going to sail so I rushed to get the generator down to South Florida to the Seaport.
Later the next day, I got a phone call from US customs asking about the permits to export the “military equipment.“ it took some talking and an extra day, but we finally received word that I did not need any permits to export the generator.
Fast forward a week and I still has not heard anything on the shipping but I knew the barge had made it over. My friends on the island went on a hunt for the generator but were unable to find it.
Late in the evening (10:30pm) two days later I got a text saying they found the generator and they were going to put it at a buddy of mine’s house until I got over.
This past weekend I headed over with a load of stuff, with the plan to get everything hooked up.
The first step was chain sawing my way down the road to the house. Parts of my neighbors house were in the middle of the road as were many trees. A couple hours later, I had a clear path to the house.
Next came the waiting game. The gentleman who normally runs the loader is in the hospital. His brother was now doing twice the work. Priority came to getting heavy items moved that benefit they entire island so my generator was last on the list to get moved.
Around 6:30pm we finally got the generator placed next Ed to the power panel. An hour later, the meter was pulled , Polaris connectors were attached and I was up and running! For the first time in three months there was power!
After running flawlessly for over 6 hours, the generator shut down. I wandered out in the darkness to take a look and couldn’t see anything that stood out.
At first I figured the fuel was exhausted, but it appeared to still have several gallons of diesel left. I figured A couple more hours without power wouldn’t hurt so I waited until the sun came up to dig further.
Something caused the engine to bog down.
I borrowed a clamp on amp meter and went to checking loads. With just the ac running, I was pulling 24.5 amps on l1 and 26 amps on l2. By that math I should have plenty of amperage left. To run not only the AC bit other stuff as well. (In the early evening I ran lights, the ac and the water pump with no real issues. When the pump kicked in I did get a little surge)
Now I wonder why the thing bogged down!
Any thoughts?
My next course of action is to rig up an auxiliary fuel tank that I can run off of and the placement of a proper manual transfer switch.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I won the auction for the lofty sum of $375. A couple of batteries and a new relay later and I have a total of $600 into the system. It took the wisdoms of this board to get it running but it does!
Getting it to the Bahamas proved to be interesting. Obviously because of the weight, I could not just fly it over. It had to go by a barge. Moving it by barge was going to be very expensive. This is where relationships come in.
I learned that a friend of a friend had a truck he was donating, going over on a barge. I was able to get in contact with this person and was told we could put the generator in the back of the truck for the trip.
What I didn’t realize was the generator had to be at the Seaport two days later since they did not know when it was going to sail so I rushed to get the generator down to South Florida to the Seaport.
Later the next day, I got a phone call from US customs asking about the permits to export the “military equipment.“ it took some talking and an extra day, but we finally received word that I did not need any permits to export the generator.
Fast forward a week and I still has not heard anything on the shipping but I knew the barge had made it over. My friends on the island went on a hunt for the generator but were unable to find it.
Late in the evening (10:30pm) two days later I got a text saying they found the generator and they were going to put it at a buddy of mine’s house until I got over.
This past weekend I headed over with a load of stuff, with the plan to get everything hooked up.
The first step was chain sawing my way down the road to the house. Parts of my neighbors house were in the middle of the road as were many trees. A couple hours later, I had a clear path to the house.
Next came the waiting game. The gentleman who normally runs the loader is in the hospital. His brother was now doing twice the work. Priority came to getting heavy items moved that benefit they entire island so my generator was last on the list to get moved.
Around 6:30pm we finally got the generator placed next Ed to the power panel. An hour later, the meter was pulled , Polaris connectors were attached and I was up and running! For the first time in three months there was power!
After running flawlessly for over 6 hours, the generator shut down. I wandered out in the darkness to take a look and couldn’t see anything that stood out.
At first I figured the fuel was exhausted, but it appeared to still have several gallons of diesel left. I figured A couple more hours without power wouldn’t hurt so I waited until the sun came up to dig further.
Something caused the engine to bog down.
I borrowed a clamp on amp meter and went to checking loads. With just the ac running, I was pulling 24.5 amps on l1 and 26 amps on l2. By that math I should have plenty of amperage left. To run not only the AC bit other stuff as well. (In the early evening I ran lights, the ac and the water pump with no real issues. When the pump kicked in I did get a little surge)
Now I wonder why the thing bogged down!
Any thoughts?
My next course of action is to rig up an auxiliary fuel tank that I can run off of and the placement of a proper manual transfer switch.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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