Generator Build - Seized LiFan Generator (Part 3)

hey guys welcome back so this is part three on this 8 500 watt life in generator you know i picked this up originally as a parts machine the engine was stuck or at least mostly it could be rotated but only with extreme force so part one was spent disassembling this engine and ultimately the cause of the issue was the connecting rod and i went on ebay found a replacement for only eighteen dollars and in part two i put this engine back together and things were going pretty well until i got to the valves and i noticed the exhaust valve was missing a rotator cap and i couldn't find that cap anywhere inside the engine so i think that is what caused the failure of the connecting rod you know at some point that cap fell off went into the engine got chopped into bits and made its way between the connecting rod and the crankshaft journal so we got that rotator cap replaced and then realized that the push rod retainer was worn for the exhaust valve so with a worn retainer it allowed that rocker to move out of place and that is why the rotator cap fell off causing all the issues with this generator so got all those parts replaced and by the end of part two we got this engine to fire up but it just exposed another issue the decompression system on this is not working at all you know this should have about 60 psi when trying to pull start it and this one is coming in at 110 psi so we do still have issues and i think i know what it is i actually don't think it's the camshaft i think it's something with the exhaust valve itself so i'm going to get you set up a little bit better we're going to pull that valve cover back off and see if we can figure this thing out i'm also going to pull the spark plug out just so i can rotate the engine without any resistance so if i rotate the engine you can see we have the exhaust valve opening no issues intake's opening now it's closed and we're just starting the compression stroke so if i keep going we should see that exhaust valve move just a bit and it does so i think the compression release is working on the camshaft what i'm very suspicious of is this valve spring retainer when putting this back together i noticed the valve stem was very low in that retainer so i think we have an issue either with the valve or the retainer i ordered up a new retainer i'm going to try to install that now without removing the head so what i'm going to do is actually put a little bit of rope in the cylinder i'll rotate the engine to top dead center and what that'll do is two things i guess first it'll make it so the valve can't fall in having it at top dead center but it can fall in some and that's going to make reinstallation the retainer pretty difficult but with the rope in there i'm hoping it'll actually hold the valve up tight and that'll make it much easier to do this without removing the head so let's get some rope in there we'll get it to top dead center and we'll try swapping out that spring retainer you so just trying to minimize the chance of this rotator falling in the engine so this here is what i'm talking about this is the top of the valve stem and when you put the rotator cap on the edges of the cap sit on this lip that's right here and this valve stem is not much above the level of that lip and the rotator it's probably going to be impossible to see but it's pretty deep you know you need that valve stem to go in there quite a bit and the way it is right now it really has no chance so let's get that off and get the new one on i've got both valve spring retainers here side by side and i think you can tell which one the new one is and the old one the one on the left is the new one there's a lot more material there to hold on to that valve and the one on the right most of that material is missing and i'm surprised actually that it was holding on to that valve at all so let's get the new one on i think this will fix our issue these valve spring retainers have a flat side those should be facing down if you do it any other way then the rocker is going to make contact and it's going to start kind of wiggling this thing around when opening and closing the valve and that's going to cause wear similar to what we see here you it looks a lot better i'm not going to set the valve clearance exactly right now and i just did it based on feel and we're definitely in the ballpark so i'm going to get the battery reconnected as well as the compression tester and do another compression test beautiful we are at 60 psi and that's where we should be so i think i dodged a bullet on this one i thought for sure i'd have to open that engine again i'm just about done prepping this engine to get the power head reinstalled and usually all i have to do is fill a cylinder with rope to lock up the engine and that'll let me torque down the rotor but for this one i actually need to stand this engine up vertical to get this power head reinstalled so i drain the oil out since there's a good chance that might spill out of the breather anyway and i've also added a strap just to help hold things still i'm going to leave the engine in the frame we'll just tip the frame up on its end and we'll use gravity to our advantage to get the power head reinstalled and this one's a little more difficult because the end housing isn't attached to the stator usually it is with a couple bolts but some reason there's no bolts on this one there are holes both on the stator in the end housing for those bolts but just no bolts anyway i think i'm ready to go so let's uh get this power head back on on the generators i get most rotor bolts come in two diameters it's this one which is the smaller of the two it's about eight millimeters and the larger one here is about 10 millimeters this is the one that came on this generator uh these are usually tightened to 30 or 35 foot pounds and these you do not want to go over 23 foot pounds anyway i don't usually see lock tight on these threads this one may have had some so i'll put a little loctite on there just to make sure and we'll torque that bolt down to 30 foot pounds you i couldn't find any locating pin on the stator so it's really up to me to position it the right way and it doesn't have to be exact it'll work no matter what position it's in i think the bigger issue is just making sure the wires for the avr are on the top left the main legs coming out top right and then the bottom is where you have like the charge circuit and the power for the fuel solenoid yeah i didn't get the alignment quite right i have to rotate it just a bit more to the right yeah that should work [Laughter] you going to pull the engine over like this i want to see that the rotor can spin freely without making contact with the stator the rotor spins it's not making any contact with the stator so we're good to proceed i'm just going to attach these mounts right here and then we'll put this thing back right side up oh so close um it's starting to look like a generator again anyway i'm gonna get some oil in it i hate leaving engines without oil in it it's just asking for trouble there's a lot of wires going on down here but give you the quick run down what i just connected actually brings power up from the battery into the control panel so when you hit start it then sends the power down and trips the solenoid you know as far as other connectors here we have the idle control the charging circuit the low oil shutdown and this is the coil itself so you got to ground that out to kill the engine so i'm going to hook up this switch this is the grounding wire right here connects there and then these wires here one goes to the ignition switch and the other the low oil module you not going to bother tidying these wires until we know everything is good but it occurs to me this switch here is redundant we have a switch over there which is the on off and the electric start so with this one here you actually need to have both switches set to on or else the generator is not going to run so this is just going to cause confusion so i'm going to eliminate that one when you wire a stator you want to make absolutely sure you know what leg 1 and leg 2 is also the wire is going up to the control box where the outlets are two of those wires are dead short you want to make sure you know which wires those are and make sure they are on separate legs because if you put them on the same leg it's essentially shorting the leg out to itself and you're gonna destroy your stator you know in this case i have pictures of exactly how this was before i took it apart so don't take this lightly you get it wrong you're gonna destroy your generator you you [Music] you [Music] you we're in the home stretch not much left really just the carburetor which has to be cleaned so we'll do that now and the battery this carburetor is fairly clean and will probably work but if i don't clean it you know it won't work that's pretty much it there's not a whole lot to these carbs i think the big thing to look for is just making sure the jets and the emulsion tube are nice and clean and the little passages here on the side you going to test the fuel solenoid want to make sure it works and generators these function very differently than in tractors you know in tractors you actually need to energize it to retract to allow the fuel to go through the emulsion tube and the main jet generators this is normally retracted both when the machine's off and when it's running the only time this deploys out is when you turn the switch off you know the engine's still spinning the generator is still making power and some of that power is sent into here and once the engine spins down this loses power and it goes back to its resting position and the reason why they do that is so that you can pull start the engine you know tractor is always electric start but a generator even if it has electric start they usually have pull start so you need to have this ready to go in case the battery is dead yep works fine you i want to start this before finishing up unfortunately the weather is not cooperating and this is the only chance i'm going to get really for the next week so i'm going to start it real quick here in the garage got the fuel tank hooked up as well as the light so we'll get this going just long enough to see that it makes power and that everything continues to sound good now i did back the governor spring tension off a bit so it is going to run slow but hopefully it will run fast enough to see if it makes power [Applause] all right not too bad it started right up and the power came on now the engine speed was slower than i thought it was going to be so i did increase the governor spring tension to get this at around 60 hertz and it was already at about 120 volts so things sound good i have no reservations about finishing this up so let's get the air box on we'll close up the power head and get that tank reinstalled unfortunately the air box that came with this generator is all busted up and the cover doesn't really stay on too well so went on to ebay picked up another one brand new it was about 20 bucks and this one's metal so it shouldn't break i don't know why this always surprises me but they don't include the hardware you need six bolts to kind of tighten that down unfortunately i only have two so i'll put those two in for now i'll have to make a trip to the hardware store later and come back to this [Music] all right and then this tire haven't really talked much about it but the tire on the other side is perfect there's no issues no rust this one was rusted pretty bad i took some of the rust off and it doesn't look terrible but this tire it's a foam-filled tire but it has a huge flat spot it's not too easy to get this thing around so i do have another tire it is actually a tube tire but i think given the condition of this one we'll swap it out so as far as the battery goes this one actually purchased for another project and ended up not needing it now this cranks this engine fine the issue is that there's only a brace going across here and because the battery's so small it's just free to move around in there anyway i was trying to think of a few ways to secure this and i think probably the easiest is just to use these velcro straps to hold things down i'm just going to put this back for the next guy in case this is ever replaced with the proper size battery besides the air box this thing is done so i'm going to make a trip to the hardware store i'll finish getting that airbox together and i'll turn you on in a second for the load test pretty much ready to go get the fuel tank hooked up and four space heaters on standby so we'll get this thing started up let it warm up a bit and then i'm gonna apply a 3000 watt load see how that does and if everything goes well i'll double that to 6 000 watts [Music] [Applause] so so [Music] [Music] [Applause] not too bad it started second pull and once running i could tell the engine was slow so i double checked it it was at 60 hertz brought that speed up to 61 and a half and then loaded it to 3000 watts and things did pretty much perfect it held at 120 volts 60 hertz i then doubled that load to 6000 watts and it didn't do as good as i would have hoped i mean ideally it would have stayed above 58 hertz in this case it was 57.2 so there's a few reasons for that i guess the first one would be that the engine is out of horsepower so i went over here and i just manually worked the governor and opened the throttle plate i wanted to make sure that the engine could get back to 60 hertz and it did without issues then i opened it a little more and got it to 61 hertz without any issues so i'm not down on horsepower it's really a governor sensitivity issue and there's a couple things you can do to combat that i guess first you can up the speed so without a load i could bring that no load speed up to 62 and a half hertz or alternatively i can actually move the governor's spring where it sits on the governor arm you can just see it right there so a lot of governor arms have multiple holes for that spring to go and in this case there are two the further in you bring that spring to this governor shaft the more sensitive you'll make that governor in response to a load so i could move that in readjust the speed and potentially that could solve the issue but i've never seen on this style engine that's spring anywhere but where it is and i even double checked the footage from when i took this generator apart just to make sure i put the spring back in the right spot and i did you know that is where it was intended to be so i think i'm going to leave good enough alone i mean i am miles ahead of where i was i mean this was basically destined as scrap and now it is a good running machine now before you comment i did replace those bolts in the air box so that is complete and despite the model number the 8500 ie this is not an 8500 watt generator it's rated at 7 500 continuous watts so we were close to the max theoretically i could put a fifth space heater on it and that would bring it right to the max it would actually exceed it a little bit because these heaters are a little bit more than 1500 watts each anyway this one was a long video series and i wasn't sure where it was going to go you know given that this is a honda clone without parts support parts numbers or torque specs i wasn't sure i was gonna attempt to rebuild this one but in the end i think it worked out pretty well so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 74,424

Keywords: 15HP, 188F, 190F, 420cc, 8500iE, Compression Release, GX390, Generator, High Compression, Honda Clone Rebuild, Honda Clone, Honda Rebuild, LF190FD, Lifan, Locked Up, Micrometer, Seized, Small Engine, Troubleshooting, Valve Clearance, Valve Spring Retainer

Id: x1kpwtGKTHA

Length: 52min 16sec (3136 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022