Generac 5500XL with Governor Issues

hey guys welcome back so today i'm working on this generac 5500 xl this is the third and last of the generators that stanley gave to me the story i'm told on this is that a friend found it at the dump brought it home and put new fresh fuel in it and it fired right up and made power so things were looking pretty good until he power washed it at that point it stopped working and it hasn't worked since now this is where the story gets a little bit unclear i'm not sure what stopped working was it the engine the power head you know potentially at this point it's both because this i would say has been sitting a long time since that power washing everything is covered in dust the tank has fuel in it that smells like varnish or turpentine so that needs to be removed the engine it's not stuck it actually turns over quite freely and it has compression so i would say the engine has a lot of potential but i guess in the years that have passed since this stopped working i know stanley said he tinkered a little with the governor and got in over his head so we most likely do have some governor issues as well to sort out now despite all the dirt on this machine it's actually pretty clean you know the exception is the chrome that might take a bit more work to clean up but the frame itself i don't think there's any rust on it you know most of the parts are here the exception being that handle right there so let me get you set up a little bit better i want to get the tank drained and out of the way and then we'll dig in and see what we can find i'm going to start by getting the air box out of the way that'll give me better access to the fuel line as well as some of the governor linkage now i could disconnect the fuel line up here in the bottom of the tank but there is a rubber bushing that holds this in and if i start pulling at it that could fail give this carburetor hope fuel valve is shut off but this fuel line is absolutely petrified you yeah thankfully there wasn't too much of this stuff in the tank and there is a bit of water on the bottom so yeah that that tank i'm sure needs to be cleaned out and mopped up but let's focus in on the engine and the power head and if we can get that to come back we'll get that tank cleaned up yeah we've got oil and it looks pretty clean so i say we give this a little squirt of starting fluid see if it shows any signs of life nice let's try it again this time with the light hooked up i did not expect that but the engine it sounds really good and the generator head is making power so that's good but it's also bad because this it was thrown away for some reason right and i haven't discovered what that is yet so let's get back to the original plan to get the tank out of the way and then i want to take a look at that carburetor see if it's viable and if it is i'll get it installed and we'll try running this a bit longer to see if we can't figure out what the issue is [Music] three [Applause] hmm it's never a good sign when that bowl nut won't come off let's try the impact it's not too bad actually there is some dust debris on the bottom but there's no rust a little bit of corrosion but not too bad needles not stuck so this should clean up pretty well it's really stuck in there let's get the petrified line out of the way do this is the pilot jet on the top i think i've never seen a pilot jet like that before it is tiny but it looks like it is slotted so let me try to get it out and there it is let's try to get the main jet out didn't think it was going to come out and let me see there is an emulsion tube down the center uh there is no slot though so that one it's probably not going to come out yeah the main jet's not plugged but there is a bunch of plaque on the sides and as far as this little pilot jet goes yeah it's also letting light through so this carburetor may have run as is not sure how well anyway i'm just going to go through each of these jets kind of scrape off the plaque and run through all these holes just make sure there's nothing clogged and then i'll clean it up in the ultrasonic so well that carburetor is cleaning i'm just going to roll this outside blow the dust off and maybe power wash the tank and the bottom frame rails [Music] uh i want to try to keep the water out of the stator and this control panel [Music] [Music] cleaned up pretty well the bowl it's nice and clean and the carburetor is as well you know there is some corrosion on the body of the car but that shouldn't impact the way it works okay let's make sure this needle works upside down it should be closed and you should hear nothing if you hear any air escaping it's going to leak that should be good stanley warned me that he tinkered with something down here but i don't know exactly what that was you know the one thing that stands out is this spring right here it is not the spring that would have come on this engine and it's connected by a piece of wire on either side but you know that said it's not critical that we have the right spring right here this one here is the critical one and that looks to be correct the whole purpose of this spring is to just take the slop out of the governor rod you know if i just wiggle it right here you can see there is play and it would be like that on both sides and without that spring that is enough to cause surging and oscillating in an otherwise clean carburetor so this homemade spring should work fine you know if the engine runs well i might have something a little better but we'll leave that alone for now and my other concern was just the calibration of the shaft that goes into the engine versus the governor arm and the governor rod to the throttle plate but you know i checked that real quick things seem fine you know to double check that just hold the carburetor against the insulator make sure the throttle is in wide open throttle which in this case it is wide open throttle right now and this rod right here is being held wide open throttle by that spring so when both the governor arm and the throttle plate are in wide open throttle they should line up right where that bend is versus the hole that's right there if it's off i'd say by more than an eighth of an inch then the governor is not going to have control of things but in this case i think we'll be fine it's not the best design having this here really limits how well you can maneuver here i may have spoken too soon this custom spring although it should work it's not going to work the way that it's connected if i move the governor arm you can still see there is some slop there and that's not because of the custom spring it's actually because of where this wire is connected right now it's connected to the z bend on the rod itself but to take the play out that wire should actually be connected to the governor arm so let me relocate this wire and then we should be good to go there we go pretty much ready to go here i've got the fuel connected and the space heaters on standby what i'm mostly curious about i guess there's a few things first how is that carburetor going to run the engine is the governor going to have control and what is the power output going to do it's going to be stable at 120 volts or are we gonna see something odd so let's get it started and see how it does [Music] [Applause] not too bad the engine started right up the carburetor is running the engine very well and the governor had control maybe a little bit too much control we started at 120 volts 60 hertz loaded it to 3000 watts and the engine speed dropped quite a bit to 54 hertz and the voltage did as well but that is mostly due to the engine speed sag so i grabbed a hold of the throttle brought the engine speed back up manually to 60 hertz and the voltage came up as well to 118 volts so overall things are doing pretty well you know as far as the governor not letting up its grip on the engine speed i am betting that this spring here might be in the wrong position there are five holes here and the further in you move it the more responsive the engine is to a load and maintaining that load of course if you go too far in it starts oscillating so when looking at these holes it actually looks like this one is worn just a bit so i'm guessing that is where this spring belongs also the string is stretched out a little so that could be an issue as well but let's move the spring over and try it again so definitely better it held at around 57 hertz instead of 54 like last time so i'm gonna move that spring one more position over and try it again [Applause] and that's exactly what happens when you move that spring too close the engine was surging and that is just caused by an oscillation between that governor spring and the governor itself so it does need to be moved back to that middle position which is a little bit less than ideal i mean 57 hertz isn't great under a 3 000 watt load considering this is rated at 5500 watts so i think ideally i would replace that spring it is a bit stretched out but i'm not sure if that part is available so i'm going to pause it here take a look online and see if i can replace that spring this spring it is still available i found it on amazon as well as this anti-lash spring so both of those have been ordered they'll be here in about a week so while i'm waiting for those parts there are a few things i want to take care of you know first off the oil you know the engine's still hot so i get that changed now i also need to come up with something for the missing handle that is a discontinued part and i want to tackle the chrome on the exhaust system and the valve cover see if i can't clean that up a bit i'm gonna try an sos pad with some wd-40 to see if i can't get some of this rust off the valve cover the exhaust i'll try the same but that might be too far gone unfortunately the valve cover really isn't cleaning up i do have an exhaust system from a storm responder it is a different design but this heat shield i think is compatible so worst case i might be able to get those bolts out and throw that other shield in its place [Music] [Music] that one broke [Music] and we lost two of them so need to drill those out re-tap them and put the new shield on so [Music] it looks a lot better and it seems secure but the threads on the top are not very good so i have to pay attention to those it potentially might rattle loose in which case i might have to tap these to an m6 but the bottom two are nice and snug and these are fairly good i just don't know how they're going to hold up to the vibration of the engine i picked up a set of these about half a year ago for a different project these are universal handles that fit on most generators and this one they do fit but the ideal position would be right about there and that control panel prevents it from installing there so i'm left with two options either put it down lower in which case it's pretty much on the ground or put it a bit higher than i would normally like to do but like that i think things look pretty good so i'm going to drill a couple holes you know i loosely put the tank back on and it seems to fit fine so let's get these mounted up and we should be good to go [Music] it's been about a week and the springs showed up today so i'll leave the part numbers down in the description in case you need the same so let's get these installed probably put the air box back on and give this another try you can see the old spring it's not terrible but it's clearly stretched out and damaged a bit when comparing it to the new that's a big difference a lot of spring tension and i've barely torqued that nut down so there's a lot of adjustment left with that old spring it was quite a bit further in before i got to this tension so we'll leave it like this once it's running we'll dial that in you so you you i was getting the tank ready to put back on the machine but before i can do that there were two things i needed to do first get this petrified line off and second just mop up the little bit of fuel that's left in that tank anyway as far as the line goes i mean it does have to come off unfortunately i noticed a little problem here the bushing that holds this fuel valve in it has cracked right there and it's cracked on the other side and i think the worst of it is over here you know it's just falling apart so this has to be uninstalled a new bushing put in its place i do have a couple that i purchased about a year ago for another project i'm not 100 if they're the same size but they are fairly universal i mean regardless this has to come out so let's get it out and we'll see if the bushings that i have will work on this tank yeah it's pretty nasty i'd say it's about 80 percent water so these plastic tanks with the bushing that bushing creates a little dam and even though i drain the tank you can't get every last bit out without mopping it up or in this case just removing the bushing and then the rest will come right out these are the bushings here that i use they are made by hipaa and i bought a lot of hipaa stuff over the years i know they've been pretty aggressive on advertising this year they actually sent me a gx390 type clone carb to try out but of course i haven't had an engine to use it on yet but regardless their products seem to be pretty decent for the price and they sell them on amazon but yeah that bushing looks to be compatible so we'll get some oil on it and get this installed all right i had to slide the bushing back a little bit there is a taper here where it gets really tight and that pushes this against here to form the seal so you want to make sure this is clean which it is and you drop this in push the bushing in place then you kind of twist and push on this valve until it's seated all the way down and ideally the bushing shouldn't be spinning only the valve so i'm going to try to hold the bushing still while rotating the valve in place almost that should do it so so and lastly we have the control panel there's nothing wrong with it i mean there's no rust everything works but the paint it is very chalky and that's a common problem with these xl series generators especially when they're left outside so a week ago i did put a light coat of wd-40 on the left here and you can see it's kind of evened out the colors into something that's a little bit more consistent so i'm going to apply another coat of wd-40 to both sides and just freshen it up a bit let's try this again i'm going to get the engine started adjust that governor spring bring the engine up to 61.5 hertz and load it to 3000 watts and hopefully this time it can stay above 58 hertz ideally the closer to 60 the better that was not what i expected the response from the engine was not good when i started it it was running fast and this adjustment nut is backed almost all the way out and i had to back it out even more to get the engine to slow down to about 61.5 hertz but once i applied that 3000 watts the engine speed dropped to 53 hertz so something still isn't right here maybe we have an issue inside the engine i'm not sure so i'm gonna start it again and i'm gonna manually just throttle it down and when i let go if things are working we should see the throttle open wide and as soon as it gets back up to speed the governor should counteract that and find an equilibrium [Applause] not sure what to think on this one when starting it it was kind of sluggish to get up to speed like that spring wasn't applying enough pressure which it really isn't i mean there's not a lot on there right now but when i manually throttled it down and let go the throttle plate snapped open and then the governor arm closed the throttle once it got up to speed and i even manually sped the engine up just to see if i could feel the force of the governor trying to close that throttle plate and i felt it so i'm gonna have to give this one some thought you know everything seems to be working but we're not getting what we expect all right let's give this one more try i did move the spring out a hole so it's on the second to last one and that's where it was when i got this generator so get it started we'll reset the speed again and see if there's a different result [Music] [Music] wow that was a big improvement the engine started it was running slow so i brought it up to 61.7 hertz loaded it to 3000 watts and that engine speed stayed rock steady holding at about 61.4 hertz which makes this one of the most responsive governors i've ever worked on usually they do drop by a few hertz under that kind of load so before concluding the video i guess there's two things i wanted to just note here i did speak with stanley and he confirmed actually he did loosen the bolt that connects the governor arm to the governor shaft and after he did that he didn't have confidence that he did it right and he never tried starting this engine again which is too bad because he also mentioned that he replaced a board down here in the powerhead and that is the pcb that is the part that i was suspecting was bad so he unknowingly fixed this correctly years ago and really all i did was finish it up so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching not so fast i thought i was done but a couple weeks went by i brought it back out just to make sure and was surprised when i started the engine it was running fast at about 67 hertz and that one has me scratching my head so let me start it up real quick show you what i'm seeing and i think i have an idea as far as what's going on so it started pretty normally about 62 hertz and i wasn't sure it was going to do it but it did the engine speed started to pick up and kind of topped out at about 67 hertz now one thing i didn't show you is that if i go down here and manually operate the throttle linkage here on the governor and i increased the engine speed even beyond 67 i feel the governor working against me to slow the engine down but once i let go it stabilizes at about 67 hertz and i don't feel much force from the governor so i'm leaning towards either internal damage or maybe this is out of adjustment i didn't check this bolt here potentially it was adjusted right and things kind of shifted a bit i'm not sure but i think the next course of action here is to loosen that bolt reset the governor and try this again and to do this you want to get your bearings this spring is pulling it open throttle when the engine's off so this arm rotates clockwise so when i loosen this bolt i want to turn the shaft clockwise as well until it stops and just tighten it back up all right the shaft's loose rotate it clockwise till it stops which is right there and that's pretty much where it was unfortunately so i think the governor is adjusted or was adjusted properly so i don't think this is going to fix it well things have gone from bad to worse but i think i know why when i move the governor arm it's not moving freely when the engine's off it's wide open throttle and when it starts it needs to move that throttle down so it doesn't over speed but this bolt right here holding this bracket is now interfering with the governor arm so when i made the governor adjustment when i reset it the governor arms slid down the shaft just a bit and now it's interfering so i wonder if that was the problem all along with the way this governor's been behaving anyway i'm going to pause it here i'm going to make the same exact adjustment just move the governor arm up a little bit and try this again adjustment's been made the governor arm is now higher up on the shaft and we have a full range of motion so let's try this again all right that was a lot better the engine speed was under control it was right at about 62 hertz loaded it to 3000 watts and the engine held close to 59 hertz and that is typical that is what i normally see so all the testing i did earlier with kind of those strange results i think it can be chalked up to the fact that maybe this governor arm was making a little contact with that bolt and when i made my adjustment i made it even worse you know but now things are responding quite well so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching wow

Channel: James Condon

Views: 116,479

Keywords: 5500 XL, Anti Lash Spring, Anti Surge Spring, Carburetor Clean, Carburetor, Droop, Engine Racing, Fixed, Fuel Tank Repair, Generac 5500XL, Generac, Generator, Governor Calibration, Governor Droop, Governor Reset, Governor Sensitivity, Governor Spring, Governor, Handle Install, High RPM, How To, How-To, PCB, Petrified Fuel Line, Small Engine, Tank Bushing, Tank Leaking, Troubleshooting, Ultrasonic Cleaner

Id: 9x8ZU0hrKwo

Length: 67min 14sec (4034 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2022