New mep 015a

[Wdr]

Hey everyone, I just recently aquired my second piece of engine drivin military hardware. I went to a local warehouse to pick up some fire hose for my other piece of military equipment, a hale p-250 pump. Well I was there the seller said he had a military generator. It looked in good shape so for $120 it came home with me. After cleaning the carb and the points it runs, and generates easily running a 1500 watt hair dryer. I need to do some further adjustment as it seems to run at about 57 Hz and it revs up if I turn the load off though. But It starts on the first or second pull so all and all pretty happy!

 

[paraclete comes]

Nice score, not very familiar with that unit but any running gen set at that price is a score!

 

[Wdr]

Yeah! I am pretty happy, every time I mess with it I get it running even better. It is a little small for my use rated at only 1.5 kW as I live in an all electric house. But I have a freind that has gas heat and is pretty conservative with power and such so once running reliably I will probably look into getting maybe a 5 kW and pass this one along.

 

[Isaac-1]

A 1500 watt generator is better than no generator at all, with 1500 watts you can run plenty of LED or CF light bulbs, keep a refrigerator and a chest freezer cold during a summer outage, power a typical blower fan on a gas heater, etc.

 

[Wdr]

Very true and that's why I got it. Some power is better than none, and we don't have outages a lot here anyway.

 

[RIrvin]

Since you don't expect to use it often, you may wish to store it with a dry fuel system. Empty tank, lines and carb of fuel. Pick up two cans (qt.) of 100% fuel at HD to keep with generator for future emergencies. Avoids ethanol /stabilizer issues and gives you reliable starting fuel in sealed container. Good practice to just pull motor through a few times during the year without starting, just to keep pistons from sticking.

 

[Wdr]

Thanks for the suggestion, I was thinking about that, and had not decided what to do yet.

 

[Wdr]

Hey, back with a question here. Power is out and I have attempted to run the fridge on my genset and the frequency fluctuates (59-61) Hz or so even though my meter only shows about 300watts. I can run a 1500 watt incandescent lamp no problem, frequency is perfectly stable. So obviously the inductive vs resistive load is the deal, but my question is dose anyone know if this is a voltage regulator issue or something I can adjust, or if this size generator just isn't capable of running a fridge compressor? The fridge is an older one, not the new energy efficient sort but not ancient. Thanks.

 

[Isaac-1]

59-61 Hz is in the accepted variation on the mechanical governor on that generator, as to the question of fluctuating, how fast is it swingning, and what sort of meter are you using?

p.s. if it is a rapid oscillation chances are your governor is set too sensitive

 

[Wdr]

It's pretty rapid like swing back and forth every second or so. I was looking at the gauge on the generator, and have an inline watt, amp, volt, frequency meter. I realize there would be inherent fluctuation however I would think the fridge is a pretty constant load so there wouldn't be much. I have tried adjusting the governor both ways with no significant improvement. I really need to just go through the TMs and on here as I have no idea the proper procedure for adjusting the governor. I also noticed that the needle on the bowl of the carb affects how it runs, I am not sure of the proper position for it either.

Okay, so after messing with it for awhile the neighbor informed me the power was to be on in a couple hours so I decided to give up and put everything away for the time being. At some point I will try to set the governor and such. I will post back either with more questions or it working properly. Thanks a bunch for the input.