08-26-2019, 06:47 AM
Gurus,
I have been going to dog shows and running generator hard. Like running for days on end hard. When I got home to Auburn, I noticed a little oil on ground under my front mounted genny. Investigating, I found that the oil was from a little puddle in the genny compartment right under the “slobber tube”.
A call to a more experienced guru confirmed that this was not something to worry about and that I could catch the output in a can. During that conversation the master guru reminded me that I should change oil every 100 hours of generator use.
Confession: I have never kept up with generator use. Newell has performed “annuals” on the genny every year...but honestly I have never thought about the genny. I went ahead and changed the oil and filter.
This leaves me with a few questions....
1) How do you keep up with how many hours you have run the genny? My solution was to write the number of hours on the filter. Do you guys keep logs? Do you just wing it? Or do you only do an annual service?
2) Is it worth it to run synthetic oil in the genny? It seems that if you are changing oil at 100 hours, it is not really a good investment.
3) What is the realistic life on a generator? I have over 8000 hours on mine and it is going strong. It starts easy, does not produce smoke, produces a steady voltage and is generally a happy camper. (I do baby it by always having ACs and high current devices turned off when starting / stopping generator).
Since I have all the paperwork from Newell, and they record generator hours when you do an an annual, I can figure out if I have been going over the limit.
Cheers,
Bill
I have been going to dog shows and running generator hard. Like running for days on end hard. When I got home to Auburn, I noticed a little oil on ground under my front mounted genny. Investigating, I found that the oil was from a little puddle in the genny compartment right under the “slobber tube”.
A call to a more experienced guru confirmed that this was not something to worry about and that I could catch the output in a can. During that conversation the master guru reminded me that I should change oil every 100 hours of generator use.
Confession: I have never kept up with generator use. Newell has performed “annuals” on the genny every year...but honestly I have never thought about the genny. I went ahead and changed the oil and filter.
This leaves me with a few questions....
1) How do you keep up with how many hours you have run the genny? My solution was to write the number of hours on the filter. Do you guys keep logs? Do you just wing it? Or do you only do an annual service?
2) Is it worth it to run synthetic oil in the genny? It seems that if you are changing oil at 100 hours, it is not really a good investment.
3) What is the realistic life on a generator? I have over 8000 hours on mine and it is going strong. It starts easy, does not produce smoke, produces a steady voltage and is generally a happy camper. (I do baby it by always having ACs and high current devices turned off when starting / stopping generator).
Since I have all the paperwork from Newell, and they record generator hours when you do an an annual, I can figure out if I have been going over the limit.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill Johnson
Birmingham, Alabama