Neglected Predator Generator - Broken Engine Mounts and Carburetor Issues - Fixed

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home this predator generator i don't get many of these you know usually when they go up for sale they're in good running condition but not this one it was only listed at 60 and in the description it stated that the engine would run for about 10 minutes and then shut down but that it made power so that's all i needed to hear the pictures on the listing i don't think did this thing justice i mean it's obviously very dirty but i could see by looking at the engine the stator and the control panel that there was no rust and most likely this was stored indoors despite kind of what's going on on the frame rails here anyway that's the least of this machine's problems you may have already spotted this but the mounts for the stator and the engine are broken this entire thing is just floating around on the frame it's not attached at all and it's sitting at a funny angle so you know this has an oil sensor and being tipped like it is could be causing that sensor to trip and shut the machine down and more concerningly is what's going on here you know this is the governor arm connected to the governor rod and this should go over to the throttle plate which is over here but you can see it's not instead it's connected to the choke so this governor has absolutely no control of this engine and even if this was in the right spot someone drove the idle set screw all the way in so the governor still would not have been able to slow the engine down to a proper speed so that has to be fixed uh the lever for the choke is missing and also this spring here is damaged so let me get the engine and stator secured we'll deal with this mess and bring it outside see if it'll start this the fuel petcock is actually causing an issue i can't lift the engine to get it back where it's supposed to be so i'm gonna just get the tank out of the way and then i should be able to lift that up much easier and put it where it belongs so i just popped the air box off just to get better access to disconnect the fuel line and now i'm just taking the screws out here to get this rail out of the way and then the four bolts holding the tank down and it should slide out [Music] [Music] okay this is one of the engine mounts that came off of the predator and i've never come across a generator with a broken engine mount never mind all four now this one is a bit unique you can see this is the part that attaches to the frame and that's what goes into the engine block or stator and they're offset quite a bit and they're also offset a little bit in this direction and that's an issue because the only extra engine mounts i have are a straight shot you know this one i think is from a stator on a briggs and this is an engine one on a brakes but they're all straight shots so this is not gonna work for what we're trying to do and unfortunately without this offset nothing lines up i can't just bolt it on for a quick test the best i can do is line up one hole put a bolt in it and use vice clamps to kind of hold it down so that's what i'm going to do at least for now to test it and you know get a parts list together which will include these mounts and get some stuff ordered [Music] this is a better look at the idle set screw so i'm going to bring that out pretty much until it just disappears or just about to like that and i'm going to see if i have another spring the only one i have is from a 10 horse briggs and it might be a touch long so i'm going to try to shorten it a bit and just put a bend a little bit further down and cut off the extra yeah that should work yeah that's better you know i thought i had a lever for this i have a few carbs just like it but they're all missing the levers the closest thing i found was this one which is actually from a honda and it fits on there perfectly and actuates the choke the only issue is the air box does come up about this high so this is not going to work which is fine i'll come back to that later but i'll just throw the air box on and we can still work the choke with a little bit more effort actually i'm going to hold off i'm going to leave the air filter off for testing it might change the jetting a bit lean it out but that's okay i really just want to validate the engine runs and that it makes power okay and given that someone's been in here messing around i'm gonna back off the governor's spring potentially this has been turned in and i don't want the engine to overrev so i just adjusted this i added this grounding wire kind of sandwiched it in between here and noticed something the foot over here was replaced with a block of wood the other side is fine but when i was reaching up under the rail here i noticed probably can't see it the foot the missing foot for some reason was attached to the rail not really sure why that would be seems like it would be more useful down here so we'll correct that later this will do for now can i check the oil real quick there's almost no way that oil level is correct given how that engine was sitting in here so it's probably not filled properly yeah and it's not the oil level is right about there so it is low i'm gonna add a bit before trying to start it yeah that's good okay got the temporary fuel tank hooked up to the carb and just a light with a kilowatt so i want to validate you know does it run how well does it run and does it make power and almost definitely i'm gonna have to adjust the engine speed because i backed that screw out so let's give it a try don't pull it slow you know pull it until you hit compression like slowly and then give it a good a good yank if you go too slow it'll kick back is it good do let's see that 56.44 so okay good it started first pull uh the carb isn't working too well did i have to choke it almost all the way to get that surge to go away but once the engine steadied out you know i bumped the speed up to 60 and a half hertz and validated that it makes power so the engine's doing what it should it sounds good stator's working so we're in pretty good shape now that carb obviously has issues it i'm sure needs to be cleaned but in this case i am missing the choke lever and it's kind of pointless to try to order just a choke lever you know this whole setup is a clone and a clone carb for this which is what's on there already costs 15 and includes that lever so i'm just gonna place an order we'll get a new carb and order the engine mounts we'll throw those things on and give it another test okay so the new carb has been ordered as well as the engine mounts and originally i wasn't going to clean this but i think i am going to anyway you know even if i don't need it on this machine it'll be at least clean and ready to go for something else but you know the clone carb i ordered isn't the same clone carb that came off so potentially i might end up using this one anyway the bowl is already loose it looks pretty good there's no junk no corrosion the main jet looks good i'm just going to shine a light in through the side you know i'm hoping to see a sliver of light through this jet yeah and i don't see anything i mean it's a pretty small opening i may not be able to see it anyway but let me just run through that with a wire and see if it makes any difference hopefully this shows up but there is a sliver of light coming through there now so it wasn't that clogged but it it was clogged so anyway that was most likely the issue i'm just going to run through the rest of these passages with a wire and probably spray off some of this junk on top with some carb cleaner we'll soak it in the ultrasonic for a while and just put it back together this so while the carburetor is cleaning i decided to spend a bit of time starting to clean this thing up so the tank is cleaning up pretty well i haven't done the bottom yet but you can see kind of the transition here and also the generator itself you know i've been working on it clean the stator the end housing the heat shield and the control panel you name it so it's going to be a slow process i do want to kind of clean up things the best i can and you know since the engine and the stator really aren't secured most likely i'm just going to uninstall that completely get the frame bare and throw a bit of paint on these areas these here these are actually dented so at some point this thing received a bit of damage even the handle is bent and yeah it's it's had a rough life so anyway i'd like to at least get some paint on those rust areas to kind of stop it from getting worse yeah cleaned up really well almost like new anyway we'll get this thing back together just in case okay i think i found the problem here with this carb i have a bad habit of forgetting to remove the emulsion tube and it is removable on this carburetor and if there was any doubt you can probably see someone's already removed it it's missing so without the emulsion tube this carb is never gonna run right and that's that's what's wrong with this so yeah clearly someone's had their way with this the emulsion tube is missing the bowl was loose the idle screw was driven all the way in the governor linkage was hooked to the choke and the throttle was connected to nothing so yeah without the emulsion tube it's just parts okay well luckily everything's color coded so we got a black two whites and a red and the wires correspond in color over here so i need to free up this harness to come out so i gotta free these wires cut the zip tie and that should come right out so this harness is free but there's another one over here and this one controls the ignition so when you turn the generator off it kills the spark also there's a low oil light on this panel so there's a few wires here that need to be disconnected they're all kind of tucked in there so i'm just going to get the panel off and we can drop it down and get better access to all that do you all right i'm starting to understand what's going on here this wasn't the only one there's one in each corner there's one there over there and right there this wheel kit actually is an option so originally it would have been sitting on those feet just on the ground but they serve no purpose now i'm just going to remove all of them and when i put it back together i'll actually just use these feet they're a little bit different than the one that's on here so i'll take that one off put two matching ones on and run with it like that got the wheels and the feet reinstalled as well as the heat shield the new engine mounts are here they haven't been secured yet but i was just placing them in the spots where i think they go so i'm going to tighten that down throw the engine on tighten that down and just get this thing reassembled not too bad the stated ones look good you know the engine ones are tweaked a little bit you know it seems like it was lining up more right about here so you know not exactly perfect but i think it'll be fine okay new carbs on the left and it looks pretty good you know it is a match and looks pretty much identical i think the only difference is that this one does have an adjustable pilot jet so theoretically this is an improvement and once it's running if it's running a little rich or lean we can tweak it with that screw so so yeah these are homemade filters and that's an issue i guess because they don't fit there's like a gap up here of about an inch so you know any dusty air is going to come right in here and just go right around and in and that's going to kill the engine very quickly so you know luckily i mean generators aren't usually run in dusty environments but it does need to be replaced noticing a few more issues with this air box i mean besides the custom made filters that don't fit the whole box is kind of like at an angle it's not sitting parallel and after looking a little closer i can see what's going on the back of the box is cracked so it's not really making a good connection to the carburetor and also the there's supposed to be a tab on the back that holds that choke lever in place that tab is missing so the lever doesn't really stay and you can see where that tab used to be so yeah i mean could this work could we patch it yeah but you know for eight or nine bucks it would get me just the air filter and for twice that it would give me the whole new air box with the filter so that's what i'm gonna do you know for now for testing i'll just leave this where it is and uh replace that later and i'm gonna reattach the wires here and get this panel back on i have cleaned it up you know unfortunately something was spilled on it some sort of glue or epoxy not really sure but it is kind of leaving marks where there shouldn't be and same thing with the tank you know after i finished cleaning it that's kind of the top part that cleaned up really well and then down here there's that same stuff on here and it just doesn't come off so you know that's unfortunate but it's just cosmetic it's not gonna hurt anything other than the resale value and these two black wires just go to the kill for the magneto you know one of them is the on off switch and the other one i believe is just the low oil sensor and this is a little blown out just going to use a washer to kind of widen this bolt a bit to grab on to what's left okay we'll give this thing a quick try i've had a lot better luck with honda clone carbs so hopefully this one works out and that's why you need the tab this thing jumped right off couldn't turn the choke off fast enough so let's try this again so [Music] uh it's amazing the difference an emulsion two makes starts runs sounds good and handled 3000 watt load no issues which is pretty much the max that this thing can do so i'm going to get this back inside we'll get the oil changed while it's hot and then finish this thing up it has a little bit of gray in that oil so there is some metal and honestly not that surprised it was low on oil throttle was disconnected from the governor and the engine was sideways to the broken mounts but luckily i think we got to it in time i mean the engine is not knocking and it's producing plenty of horsepower to get to the rated load so i think we're good and just a side note filling oil on one of these is nearly impossible because when you get the funnel in it's sideways so i do have a pump like an oil transfer pump but this works well too this is just a syringe with a hose on it i usually use this for inverter generators you know things with smaller engines you know in this case it worked quite well it doesn't make a mess and you can you know both take oil out with it as well as put it in okay the new air box arrived it's a slightly different design but it is meant for clones of this size it should bolt on without issue this one has the missing tab it's also metal at least on the back and it comes with the proper size air filter you know oddly enough they didn't include the four bolts to actually hold this thing down but not a big deal i got plenty of those i think we are gonna have to do a modification though the tank is ventless on this and it runs a line down into the box and in this case there's nowhere to accept that line so i'm just going to cut a hole right about here or drill a hole rather similar to how the breather goes we'll just cut it the right diameter and push that vent tube in there [Music] you it fit on here pretty well you know i did have to bend this a bit to get it back in shape but it's nicely secured you know it's sitting the way that it should now there is a problem though this box is a bit wider and the wheel is rubbing a little bit right there so i'm going to get the wheel off just put a little spacer there maybe give it just a little bit more room so that it doesn't touch the box just a few washers i started off this video saying i hardly ever pick up predators because they always work but as luck would have it i picked up another predator this one's twin yesterday and that one has a bad powerhead it can't be saved so i've already taken that one apart it's over there there'll be a separate video on that but now i have all the parts i already purchased for this one plus a few more that i didn't the first one being this handle you know those this one is usable it is damaged there you know the brackets damaged and even the handle down here is falling apart you know the foam so i pulled off the handle from the other predator this one's in perfect shape so i'm going to swap that out also the rail that goes over there to hold that side of the fuel tank is damaged and still usable but there's a good dent there and it's not quite right so i pulled the rail from the predator i just got and this one's perfect so i'm gonna use these two parts instead of the ones that came on this machine and we'll get the tank on the end cover and we'll just bring it back out and do one last test [Music] so now that it's all back together i just want to run it one last time make sure there's no surprises yeah not too bad it starts first pull you know the engine sounds good and you know i'd say we're miles ahead of where we were on this machine you know the engine is now secured frame is painted up we have an emulsion tube and replaced a few other parts that were damaged so i think i'm done hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 25,028

Rating: 4.9461732 out of 5

Keywords: Broken Engine Mounts, Carburator, Carburetor Linkage, Emulsion Tube, Engine Mounts, Fix, Fixed, Generator, Governor Linkage, Governor Rod, Governor. Harbor Freight, Honda Clone, Predator 3200, Predator 4000, Predator Generator, Predator, Small Engine, Throttle Plate, Troubleshooting

Id: 65nD5hNskdk

Length: 45min 31sec (2731 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020