Generator Engine Repower - Engine Swap (Briggs to Subaru / Robin)

hey guys welcome back so I got here a Briggs & Stratton storm responder this is one actually that I fixed about half a year ago and sold it to a contractor who said he got lots of great use out of it but this generator unfortunately does not have a little oil sensor and he ran it when it was low in oil so this engine grenaded itself it cannot be fixed I take that back it could be fixed but it probably cost $700 in parts which is completely not worth it this generator set would sell for 350 at best so I'm going to strip this machine basically take all the parts except the engine and normally I wouldn't accord this cuz there's not much to see that's just me taking stuff apart and not fixing anything but I have something I want to try so a few videos ago I got a husky pair of generators and one of them had a bad alternator so that I parted out on eBay luckily not much of it is sold yet so I still have most of the engine that came off of that and it's right here obviously I got some work to do to put this back in working order but I have enough parts to get this running at least enough to see if it'll work with this and actually I'm kind of jumping ahead here because I don't know if this alternator is going to bolt on to this engine and even if it does there's a few challenges like are the mounting bolts gonna line up and then probably more importantly you know it's a plastic tank so it needs a heat shield around the exhaust and you know I don't know if the Subaru exhaust will clear everything properly in here I think it will but I won't know until I try but before I do any of that I need to basically get everything apart here strip this down to the frame get the alternator off and go from there so I don't want to get my hopes up yet but I'm thinking that Subaru engine will bolt on and line up almost perfectly with these existing holes for this brakes and the top bolts seem to be the same measurement and the shaft is a standard tapered shaft so that shouldn't be an issue so might be able to make a Franken generator here which would be nice it'll allow me to free up some space by getting rid of that and all its parts and then I could obviously flip this and get this out of here as well so let's uh let's get started by breaking this thing down hey it's there okay so I'm just prepping here I'm gonna pull the brushes off and that ground wire I already removed and that's it once that's out I can remove this Center bolt which holds the rotor in as well as the bolts that go around the stator pull the stator off and then start strategizing on how to get that rotor off okay good now this stator should slide right out in at evie so make sure you hold it well that's it so this is the easy one there it is all right so I just got all the bolts out and pulling this this broken engine apart just to see where the point of failure was yep so this actually kind of looks fixable I say that now that I have it all in a million pieces but you know the piston might actually be good the control at the arm here is definitely destroyed yeah just look too bad yeah it's in pretty bad shape it's actually broken okay so we're down to a bare frame I was all excited to reassemble this thing and realized that I cannot and it's not bad news it's just I can't do it right now I put the bell housing from the Briggs on the Subaru and the holes all line up which is the good news bad news is I do not have the bolts that are meant for the Subaru engine to bolt the housing on they're kind of an oddball size the three-eighths with an 1818 threads per inch and for 3/8 usually it's like an 18 sorry a 16 for coarse thread and can't find it at any hardware stores can't even find it really at many places online but I did a one right special order it's got to take weeks to get here for four bolts so I'm not sure why I didn't save those bolts but quite honestly I never thought I'd be putting this back together in this manner so anyway it is what it is I also needed a spark plug so that's on its way into recoil that's on its way and I believe I have everything else except the airbox so when those parts get here I will turn you back on and we can resume assembly okay so I'm still waiting for the bolts to come in but probably another week or two but in the meantime I'm gonna paint this as you can see this top rail you know the paint's all lifting up coming off doesn't look too good so I'm gonna do is just tape it going across just above the height of the label and take a wire brush and knock all this stuff off and throw some paint on so you can see it's not a perfect match but it's pretty close so it'll mostly just be the top that's a color and the gas tank is gonna sit on most of that anyway so you'll just see a little bit coming over here and that's it so I think anything was going to look better than that so I'm just gonna knock that stuff off tape it up and throw a little paint on so I'll turn you back on once that's done all right it's still drying but you know I got that paint on there now so it looks a lot cleaner you can tell there is a bit of a color difference but I think once you put the fuel tank on no one's gonna notice all right three weeks they're here finally let's see if it was worth the wait that's it 18 threads per inch why they couldn't use 16 I don't know but let's see if it fits all right so beginning to see the issue when I put this new bolt in it doesn't go far enough in and the bell housing will be loose you know I measure the gap here it's about 1/2 inch and the thickness of this bell housing here is about 1/4 inch so I have to take at least a quarter inch off of these this bolt length to get this just snug out and I'm trying to figure out why you know why won't this fit you know originally I was thinking maybe I messed up the threads when I put the 16 threads per inch bolt in there but I pulled out the Subaru bell housing and I don't know how well this shows up but it's quite a bit thicker here and when I measure it you probably can't see this but it's 5/8 of an inch thick you know so you know I'd say we got to take at least three eighths of an inch off of these bolts and this is the new bolt that's in here now I actually rechecked my stash and I do have the original bolts I thought these were not them because they would not go all the way in but as it turns out I do have the original bolts so now I have some extra so I'm gonna cut these down and if I mess them up I have a few extra to work with so let me let me take care of that and I'll turn you back on in a few okay I'll cut down to size you can see these actually found all four original bolts this is the new one you can see it's a about 3/8 longer and if you compare what came out of the brakes to the new size you can see they're pretty much the same now so I'm going to attach this bell housing and move to the next step finally okay good now for the stator so I think it's going pretty well for the most part it bolts on to the brakes frame pretty well the length is good and the engine mounts are perfect the only issue I have so far is these these mounts here you know for the power head are now a little bit too high so I need to come up with something you know as a spacer to secure that half-down so I need to think about that a little bit also the other thing that's important to do at this point is to spin the engine so I have the spark plug out and really what I'm doing is I'm want to listen to the stator and the rotor I want to make sure you don't hear any scraping because if they're contacting each other a the it'll be a very short-lived generator let's just say so you know it's I have the spark plug out so there's no compression and literally just you turn listening for noise down here and I hear nothing down here all that noise you hear is just the piston going up and down as well as the valves opening and closing so then the other check here is you know I actually come down here and just spin it and I'm just watching the rotor just to make sure the spacing looks pretty even yeah so I think we're in good shape so let me just figure out something to mount the power head on a little bit better and then I can proceed with the rest of the build all right so we're gonna skip ahead to the exhaust I want to see if that heat shield is going to work [Music] [Music] so it's very close to working the only issue is seems to be hitting right here so you might have to put a little little bend in that if possible so let me take that out and see what I can do okay just go test for spark and see if the ignition switch works as well okay good so the ignition switch works and we have spark when it's turned on it seems well maybe a little weak but I don't think so I think it'll be okay okay so I'm just noticing here where the carburetor attaches there's supposed to be a plastic insulator and that is missing so I am NOT going to be able to hook up the carburetor until I get that I am kind of just set it on the studs though and when I get the insulator I will install it properly okay so to solve this one this half inch space issue here I took a piece of oak and put some holes in it that line up with these holes and what I did on the bottom here was put this recess here which will house a washer and a nut so I'm going to secure the bell housing sorry the stator housing and plate like that and then I'll lower the whole thing down and then put a hole on each side or I can put a bolt through to secure the spacer and the stator to the frame [Music] okay good now that that's secured I'm gonna focus on kind of reassemble in here connecting the wires the brushes getting the the outlets vacuumed this hole up here okay so I had to spend a minute to double-check this this can go in that way or that way the only difference is is that there's a tab right there but that tab doesn't seem to do much because I can put it in just fine either way so usually the slip ring closest to the rotor is positive in my experience and I double-checked my video and it doesn't really confirm too much as far as which one's positive and negative but what I could tell is that this capacitor was definitely on the bottom instead of the top and I could tell that this stripe was closest to me whereas if I put it this way the stripes furthest away so I think the orientation goes like this it's an AC signal in so technically these wires don't matter too much but this is DC coming out and this one is always positive this one's always negative so if you flip it over now it's backwards and you're powering it the wrong way I don't know what the result of that will be but I don't want to find out common the other way to double-check too is just by looking at this bridge rectifier so power is coming in here in here and then the power is going out here and here so this is negative going out which is going to this pin which is right here which is the one slip ring closest to me and positive is going through this capacitor into that pin which is right there which is closest to the rotor it might be easier to put the wires on first I think I covered this before but these brushes are pretty worn out you know I'd say they're definitely past kind of two thirds of its life here so I will get new brushes I'm not sure you know the brush link that's on there it's probably like a quarter-inch maybe less I'm not sure what that translates into as far as how many hours that this generator will run until there was a worn out but you know I'll look up this part and order another one if it's available which I'm sure it is and these do not need to be very tight okay so there is a grounding wire that connects into this leg and then the other end actually screws right into the frame I'm covering the hole the original hole so we would have to make a new one this looks like a self-tapping screw so hopefully I can reuse that all right this is looking a lot more like a generator almost everything's done at this point I do have some air intake stuff on order specifically the insulator in the air box that'll be here soon easy to install the bigger issue now really the only issue left that I can see is the heat shield so it does need to be modified this Subaru muffler is about a half inch wider which is causing a problem mostly because the heat shield doesn't come around the muffler like at a ninety degree it kind of comes like this but then goes on a 45 and it kind of hits the back corner here so you know turn you back on in a bit with what I came up with okay it fits it was actually pretty easy this is supposed to be like half an inch this way in going down and screws right into there to secure it so I had to cut it a little bit short slid it over looks like an inch maybe three-quarters of an inch and you know now there's no mounting points for the bottom here but this piece of wood is actually gonna work out perfect because I can just drill a hole now and secure it right there and it's no longer touching and it's probably no way to see this but it's still protecting the stator quite well so there's the shield you know comes to about there so I think we're in good shape things should be pretty well protected this by the way is an exhaust fan for the armature and the stator takes fresh air and down on that ends where it's cool so this is it this is good so I'm just going to bolt this all up wait for a few parts and then I'll turn you back on okay so I've taken it as far as I can tomorrow the insulator should arrive so I once that arrives that will allow me to bolt the carburetor on and actually run the machine and the following day the air box will will be here and that should more or less complete the generator so I'll bring it outside and fire it up and see what happens okay so this is the Subaru insulator and this part was pretty easy to get it's probably a common part to break so this is all plastic and there's no steel reinforcement or metal reinforcement here where the studs go through so when you crank down the carburetor it kind of sandwiches in between the engine and the carburetor and if you tighten the carburetor too much and this will be the first thing to give so I don't have the air filter yet so I'm just gonna bolt it up like this so that I can try it out it's probably going to run a bit lean the air filter is oiled which restricts the air flow and increases the fuel flow all right so before connecting the carburetor I'm just going to bleed the line a bit make sure there's a good fuel flow okay good it's good fuel flow the fuel color is also good no debris no water so I think we're good to this up turn it on and let the car fill up and see if there's any leaks okay good so I'm just going to turn the fuel on let the carburetor fill up and make sure there's no leaks alright so this is the fuel cap that came with it the cap works fine as a cap but obviously you can't see the dial anymore I've got this for another project and it didn't fit and for kicks and giggles I tried it here and it is a perfect and now you can actually see how much gas is in there so anyway it's been a few minutes there's no leaks in the carburetor so I think we're good for contact so let's bring this outside and see what it does okay so it is very cold and windy today I want to try to start this I think first I'm going to actually dial the throttle down a bit until I'm sure I don't hear any bad noises from the machine once I started [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] okay good it's working well the only thing I noticed is that the RPM does sag a bit with load so I put a 3,000 watt load on it you want to go from around 61 to close to 58 which isn't great so I'm probably gonna grab one more space heater and bring it up to you know about a forty five hundred watt close to 5,000 watt load just to see how bad the engine speed gets [Applause] [Applause] all right good it runs pretty well you know aside from a little bit more rpm sag than I would expect and you know with no load it's between 61 62 at half load it's still above 58 but once you bring it up to like 4000 it does drop a bit below 58 so you know it's not as good as I was hoping for but uh considering it was junk when I started I think it's good enough so I'll probably turn you back on for the air box and we'll call it done all right so the air box came today this one actually is for an e X 27 Subaru I got it because it was brand new and half the price of what it should have been so the e X 27 is almost identical to this engine uses the same carburetor same air filter I think same recoil same air blower housing so I'm hoping that this fence so I may have found the problem and why the engine was sagging so much this spring here is the throttle spring and was kind of wrapped around the throttle linkage a little bit so that could have been you know causing it to not behave so I'm gonna it's already untangled so I'm just going to reconnect it and back off the throttle again and just try resetting this again okay so I had to take a minute just to cut a gasket to fit this I didn't realize that this assembly did not come with one anyway we should be good to go now all right so we're all back together this box here was for Annie x27 engine this is in the X 30 bolts right on fine the biggest difference is this filter actually is a paper filter and usually the X 30s have an all foam filter and you know what I saw it listed I thought okay it's a foam filter but it's actually not so this could be an issue for some people but I think you could also just buy an e X 30 filter and pop it in there I think it's the same size you know if you don't want the paper one the other notable difference is the breather hose where it connects on the back it's not compatible with the breather hose that came with this for me it doesn't matter since I don't have that hose I'm just going to go down to the auto parts store and piece something together to get that connected other than that this machine is pretty much complete I will run it one more time like I mentioned before this throttle spring was wrapped once around this throttle control and that will definitely impact kind of how the governor and throttle function and that might explain what I was seeing today where you know I'd put three thousand watt load on it and it would dip the engine speed more than it should have you know it was still just barely in an acceptable range but I could tell something wasn't quite right so most likely having that twist you know around there was the issue so I probably end the video here potentially I turn you back on if I see anything interesting but on that should solve that problem anyway I hope this helps someone thanks for watching ok so I lied it's not quite the end of the video yet I'm wrapping that spring did fix the voltage or sorry the Hertz sag you know so I redialed it into 61 Hertz with no load in at a 5,000 watt load it drops to like 59 problem solved right well not quite untwisting that spring really freed up you know the throttle spring and the governor to function the way it's supposed to do and now it's oscillating when there's no load it goes away when there is a load which is pretty typical with these what I've done before to fix it is to drill the pilot shut out so I did just drill it one size they want to see how it runs if it's still surging I'm gonna try to swap out this paper filter you know for an oil to foam one and see if that makes any noticeable difference so let's start it up see if the jet drilling did anything and go from there okay good the the new carburetor actually did the trick and I say new it's not actually new it looked in worse shape than the one I had on there before but yeah just goes to show you it's not necessarily about looks it's about how it works and the other one looked a lot better this one does look a little bit more weathered but you can't argue with the results I mean there's no hunting or surging you know it's rock solid so we'll stick with that carburetor I put new brushes on those obviously work because I was getting power you know so this generator this Franken generator is uh is complete so I hopes I hope this helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 65,672

Rating: 4.8689075 out of 5

Keywords: Armature, Armature Installation, Briggs & Stratton, Briggs and Stratton, Briggs, Brushes, Blown Engine, Engine, EX30, Fix, Fixed, Generator, Install, Installation, Mikuni, Removal, Repair, Repower, Robin, Rotor, Rotor Installation, Small Engine, Stator, Storm Responder, Subaru, Swap, Troubleshooting, Nikki Carburetor

Id: kWSKi07JxXc

Length: 51min 45sec (3105 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2019