No Power Output From Generator - Fixed

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home this 5 000 watt husky generator this one i found on craigslist it was listed only at 150 and according to the description it has a good running subaru engine but the powerhead doesn't make power and more often than not when a generator doesn't make power it's usually a fatal problem in that powerhead so don't pay too much for one of these you know in my case i actually have another generator with a blown subaru engine and a good powerhead so worst case i can take two bad generators and make one good it may not come to that you know this could be a simple problem i'm not sure but visually looking at it it's in very good condition except for the wheels they are quite rusted and the end cover as well so i'm guessing moisture got in there and probably caused an issue so i'm going to start by getting that end cover off i'll take a look visually see if there's any obvious signs of a problem but before i do that i just wanted to thank ken from ken small engine due to the pandemic actually wasn't able to leave my house for a while so i messaged him asked him if he would pick this up for me and not only did he do that but he talked the seller down to 80 bucks so not a bad deal thank you ken for that anyway let me set up a little bit better and get going on this [Music] you i pulled the avr out of the way just to get a better look at the windings and i don't see any red flags here i mean the copper color looks good none of the lacing is broken so no obvious signs of a problem here i'm going to break out the multimeter we'll do some more digging and see if we can't get to the bottom of the issue there's a lot of corrosion down here on these terminals so i'm not sure i'm going to get a good consistent reading instead i'm just going to use these pins on the quick disconnect we've got two black ones on this side and two white there and then the middle is the ground usually they wire this in such a way that leg one is diagonal and leg two is the other way so let's see what we get usually 0.3.4 is a good reading and we're at point three point four on leg one so that's good let's check the other leg we're at point 3.4 so it actually seems like the stator is good let's just check each one to ground that seems to be good we'll check leg two yeah so it appears the main windings are good let's just check these other two sub windings here we've got these two blue wires that's called the dpe winding that's what supplies power to the avr usually you know 0.5 to about sorry 1.5 to about 1.9 and we're at oops looks like we're at 2. 1.9 i think that's good let's check it to ground no connection and then we have a green and a white this is the sense winding that's what the avr uses to determine what voltage the generator is at and usually that's about 0.2 ohms 0.2.3 seems good we'll check it to ground and no connection to ground so the stator actually appears to be good let's check the rotor through the brushes which is going to increase the resistance but if i were to go directly to the slip rings this rotor should be between 40 and 70 ohms but through the slip rings it is going to bring it up maybe to about 200 ohms potentially and i get nothing so either we have a bad set of brushes or we have a bad rotor so let's get those brushes off and test directly on the slip rings the brushes visually look to be fine let's just check the ohms real quick it seems fine it's hard to get an accurate reading but i saw 13 ohms flash on the screen for a second i'll check the other brush that's also fine that's actually quite a bit lower we got three ohms there but regardless we got nothing when going through the brushes to the rotor so let's see what happens if we go direct and there's nothing so yeah the rotor is bad and that might actually be a good thing because i have a lot of extra rotors i don't know if it'll fit this stator it has to be exactly the same length as the rotor that's in there so i need to get the stator off get the rotor off and see if i have one that's compatible before going any further i haven't actually heard this engine run so i'm going to check the oil real quick try starting the engine and make sure that it sounds good oil looks pretty clean and it's full but it does look cloudy there might be a bit of water in there let me show you hopefully that shows up but it's not really the color i'd expect for good oil i'd say there is a bit of water in there not a lot but it is enough to change that color of the oil so usually i wait to run the engine i make it earn an oil change but in this case i think i'm going to change it i'm glad i changed that oil it doesn't look right you know there is some contamination in there most likely a bit of water anyway let's see what this engine sounds like one [Music] okay not too bad the engine sounds very good the carburetor definitely has issues though it took a good four or five pulls to get the engine started and then once running i turned the choke off and the engine went to stall so put the choke back on halfway and things sounded pretty good so i would say we have a good engine a dirty carburetor and a bad power head so i'm gonna work to get that power head off but before i can do that i need to get the tank out of the way and the tank is full of fuel so i'll drain that out get the tank off and go from there gonna drain the carburetor first if there's water in the oil there's a good chance to summon the fuel and that would definitely make it hard to start yeah there's water in the fuel i'm surprised it started at all anyway i'm sure there's more in the tank so there's no question that fuel has to come out it wasn't as much fuel as i thought in that tank you know the first bottle that came out is clean no water to speak of so that is good fuel the second one not quite as good i'd say it's about 95 fuel but right down there in the bottom is water and the last bottle definitely the worst i'd say 90 water and just a little bit fuel right on the top so that fuel is still good i'm gonna pour that off into a separate tank and all this stuff at the bottom that will get recycled anyway the tank it is mostly empty at this point there's still a little bit in there so i tilted the generator away from the fuel outlet and i'm just going to mop up what's left and then we should be good to proceed that stuff there is the reject [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] this one put up quite a fight i thought i was going to break the end housing trying to get the ball bearing out there's a lot of rust here that was kind of holding it in place but now that it's out i can tell this bearing is shot it's very crunchy and making a lot of noise so that would have to be replaced if this rotor was good which it's not usually these don't melt down but the wire does tend to break between this terminal and where it goes into the main coil and in this case don't see any breaks see if this connection is good here seems fine let's check the other side wire looks good i'll check the terminal and that is a broken solder joint so that's an easy fix this can be repaired but since we also have a bad bearing let me check my other rotors if i have one that's compatible i'll go with that otherwise we can just repair this okay good this rotor already has threads and it's an m12 1.75 so there's two ways i can use this bolt to get the rotor off first would be to put some teflon on here tip this up vertical fill the shaft with water and just twist the bolt down it'll build hydraulic pressure and push it right off you know in this case the bolt that was in here is a pretty thin diameter and there's a lot of extra room so i can put a rod down the shaft cut to size and essentially do the same thing so you just need to get a measurement of where the bolt hits the crankshaft and mark it and then you need a rod that's a little bit less than that long about a third of an inch less and i've got some pre-cut from other projects and this one looks to be the right size so i'm going to use this one to push that off the bad rotor is on the left the good on the right this is also from a husky generator it's from an hu5000 which is the same series generator just a newer revision visually you can tell there are differences between these two the newer one has a plastic fan and the permanent magnet is on the opposite end now i don't know if that's going to cause an issue with the unit powering up it might but in order for this to have any chance of working the dimensions have to be matched and i've already checked the width it's a fairly standard size we're good there the length is critical if there's a difference then the brushes won't line up and the ball bearing won't seat properly in the in housing so i already marked on this drill bit where this one exits and when comparing it to this other rotor it's really close i would say within a sixteenth of an inch possibly an eighth so this might work it might not but it's so close i think the only way to know for sure is to install it and see where things line up going to tighten the rotor to 23 foot-pounds but i need to lock the engine up and usually what i do is rotate the engine so the pistons at the bottom of its travel fill a cylinder with rope and that essentially locks things up but in this case i can just remove the recoil put a wrench on it to hold things still and then torque down on that rotor mm-hmm i think that did it the stator went on without issue and seated into the bell housing and the ball bearing looks good as well so i'm going to install the brushes and just double check the alignment on those slip rings that alignment is dead on so i think this is going to work foreign now's a good time to pull the engine over you want to make sure that rotor is not scraping on the stator or even worse the engine binding up anyway the spark plugs are moved so there's going to be no compression fighting me interesting not sure what to think of this one the engine turns freely i don't hear scraping and the engine's not binding up but there is this odd squeal and that could be a sign of an issue uh in this case i'm not sure so let me give this one a bit of thought before moving on so i wasn't sure what to think of that noise so i ended up pulling off the stator really just wanted to look for any rub marks and i'm not seeing it you know it looks pretty good same thing with the rotor the interesting thing though is that now that it's uninstalled that noise is gone so there clearly was an alignment issue i'm gonna pause it here reinstall the stator see if it's any better glad i took that stator off again it wasn't right and now it is it was actually quite a bit easier the second time since that ball bearing was freed up but i made a rookie mistake i took it off with the brushes installed and this is what happens when you uninstall a stator with the brushes attached usually the brushes break right down here in this case the plastic housing broke but that makes me wonder was it the brushes somehow squealing on the slip rings i'm not sure but i'll never find out start by giving this a new set of brushes you you when connecting up the brushes it is polarity sensitive and these usually it's the left terminal that is positive and in this case it's red and it's marked with this little tag here with a plus sign you and that's it for now theoretically this should make power but i've never combined two different powerheads before so it is a bit of an unknown so let's get it outside start it up and see what happens not exactly the nicest day for this but i need to know so let's get started the good news is that rotor works fine but i'm only getting power output on one of the legs so if i'm lucky there's a bad connection otherwise the stator might be bad i'm going to start by testing the resistance in leg 1 and leg 2. i'll also check here on the 240 outlet and see where we're at so it is higher you know down at the stator it was 0.3.4 and through the outlets we're at 0.7 let's try the top one and about the same on the top let's try this one it's open circuit open circuit and then we'll check it through the 240. the neutral is right here and then leg one and leg two are on each side so we got the 0.7 over there and open circuit again so this leg is definitely dead at least up here so i'm going to unplug the quick disconnect again we'll check it there and just make sure that the stator didn't melt down all right let's check both the legs from the quick disconnect we're at point 4 on leg 1. and point four on leg two so i don't need to do any more tests down here i can tell just by the way that this tested there's no issue with the stator or this wiring the issue is inside this box right here so i'm going to get it uninstalled get it opened up on the bench and figure out what went wrong yep so well there's your problem somebody unplugged the wires from the circuit breaker there are two breakers on here one for leg one the other leg two and with that one unplugged you're not going to get any power to that leg and that's what we're seeing one of the outlets is dead and half of the 240 is dead so it's probably as simple as plugging those wires in you know why somebody unplugged it i'm not sure but my best guess is when this stopped making power someone tried opening this up and if they didn't unlatch this properly they would not have been able to gain a whole lot of access and they probably just peeled it back and the first thing they could reach is that circuit breaker and they just ripped the wires off and probably gave up at that point so yeah let's plug those wires back in reassemble this and test it again i'm tempted to just throw those wires on and call it good but i have it open and i have the multimeter so let's just check the resistance real quick circuit breakers should have a very low resistance i'm guessing 0.1 ohms somewhere in that area so let's see where this one's at 21 ohms that's way too high uh let's check the other one just see what that one's at point three point two point one yeah so that circuit breaker i think is actually bad so i have one that is rated the same so i'll get this one out put the good one in and throw this back together i'm gonna steal the fuse from this panel it is a 20 amp fuse just like this one and this actually has the exact same connector on the back as this so i could just plug this in and use this panel but i did test the pin out and it is different so plugging this one in may not be a good thing so i'll just steal the fuse and stick with this one i stand corrected the bad fuse is actually a 25 amp fuse which is good because the one i just pulled out is also a 25 amp and because i'm extra paranoid i'm going to check the circuit from start to finish so i'm going to probe here on the quick disconnect one of the legs it's either the the black wire or the red start with the red wrap point one ohms that's good let's check the black wire 0.1 ohms so we're good you foreign and that should do it both the 120 outlets should work as well as the 240. the only other issue that i'm aware of that has to be dealt with is that carburetor the engine does not run well when the choke is off so let's uninstall that carburetor get it up on the bench and clean it up no air filter you actually looks pretty good in here so these makunis they run them quite lean on the subarus most likely the pilot jet is a little bit clogged and even when fully clean they still hunt and surge a bit so i will clean that jet aggressively and hopefully that will solve the issue you and this jet it does not unscrew it's actually just pressed in pretty loosely the issue is getting it out you can't just twist it out sometimes you can grab it with pliers and this one's pretty loose so i think it might come out but there is a hole right in the center so if this doesn't work you can get a wood screw and just drive it in there a bit and that'll kind of grab it and let you pull it out yeah that's pretty dirty you can see some gel on it so that is definitely the issue with this one that's pretty much it on this card really nothing else comes out there is a pilot adjustment right here but you can't remove it i've tried usually it just breaks off so don't try to remove it or you will lose what little adjustment you have this jet is clogged solid so i'm just using a wire from a wire brush to kind of poke through there we go that is pretty much it the only thing left really is the emulsion tube and that is a press fit on this one unfortunately so that is not removable anyway let's get this soaking in the ultrasonic cleaned up pretty well you know the inside actually wasn't that dirty to begin with and the outside really what you see here is just corrosion and that the ultrasonic is not gonna clean off anyway let's get this back together foreign you you i don't stock a lot of parts but i do stock these filters for the subarus often i see them missing i'd say about 50 of the time anyway you do oil these filters and squeeze out the excess i just used motor oil subaru actually recommends three parts diesel to one part oil i ended up pulling this panel off again it was bothering me that this outlet was still testing high at 0.6.7 ohms so i replaced the other fuse so now both fuses have been replaced and now when i test i get the readings that i expect which is 0.4 0.3 and same on the other side so now they're matched so what went wrong with these fuses the original ones i don't know but i'm going to take the worst of the two just drill out the rivets and take a peek inside [Music] [Music] so [Music] it's not too bad i was expecting worse there's a little bit of green where there shouldn't be but it's not terrible anyway these circuit breakers are pretty simple design it's just power in power out and the current it travels across this bi-metallic strip when too much current is going through this heats up and it deforms and it opens the contactor down here and i can actually see that is dirty has a bunch of corrosion on it so that i'm sure is why the resistance is high it could be cleaned up but i've already replaced the other one with one that hasn't been exposed to the elements so i'm going to leave good enough alone but you know i wouldn't say this is junk it could be salvaged anyway i'm going to apply a bit of heat to this i just want to see it in action see if it still works [Applause] and it does see the contactor opened up and it's still open but when it cools down it'll close or try to close the contactor just like that but it can't actually close the connection because this is still out and when it's in that position there's a piece of plastic separating the top contact from the bottom and when you reset it you're essentially sliding that piece of plastic out of the way resetting the spring and restoring that connection even though i already swapped out the rotor i am curious if this one can be saved i know the ball bearing has to be replaced but there's no point in that if i can't get a good connection back to the slip ring so i'm going to try to reflow this and double check the resistance to see if this rotor has any chance of being used in the future it's not sticking i'm going to try to clean it up use a bit of flux still nothing so it's not a great connection obviously but it is stuck to the terminal 2.7 million ohms better than zero but that is not good so i yeah i don't know what i'm doing wrong here it has a connection it's almost acting like the varnish on the magnet wire isn't scraped off that plus the solder really is not sticking you know i'd say there's a ton of flux on there not so much solder so i'll try this a little bit longer but yeah this is why i don't try to save rotors float everywhere except on the wire seven million ohms no good nothing so either i don't have the right tools or the talent but there's still no connection and the solder is actually sticking well to the terminal now but it absolutely will not stick to the wire it's repelled by that wire which might explain why it let go in the first place yeah i think there might be a bigger issue with this rotor i'm just trying to scrape a clear spot of copper here on the wire and test from the wire to the other side it should be around 50 ohms i really can't get a reading even remotely close to that well that's why i can't get a good reading the wire had weakened so much that it was ready to break in another place so do we have enough left you yeah there is something wrong with this router the enamel when i scrape it off you can see it's not a copper color anymore i would say this is most likely aluminum wire and although i did get a reading at one point in the millions of ohms i can't even get that now so yeah this rotor i think it's done and that's pretty much it for right now i want to get this outside we'll get it going make sure that both legs are making power and go from there all right let's give this thing a cold start and by cold start i mean really cold it was actually the coldest day in about a year this morning at negative five fahrenheit so let's get it started see if the carburetor is doing a better job and test the output on both of the legs and if things are good we'll load it up and see if things keep working the way they should [Music] [Applause] runs well with the choke off under a load [Music] all right not too bad it started second pull and the engine sounded good at least for a few seconds i did have to partially choke it to get it to smooth out and we're getting power from leg one and leg two so we're doing pretty well now the engine speed and the voltage they were low without a load i think we were just at about 60 hertz 117 volts so i brought the engine speed up to 61.5 hertz loaded it to 3000 watts and the engine speed held just fine at 60 and a half hertz and the voltage right around 117 volts and under load i was able to turn the choke off things kept running just fine until i took the load off so that pilot jet does need a bit of attention it's pretty typical on these mikuni carbs a lot of them do surge without a load so potentially it might need to be drilled out but before i do that i'm going to pop the avr off i want to bring the voltage up a bit to 120 volts if not a little bit over usually one full turn clockwise will bring the voltage up about three volts but not always sometimes it's counterclockwise and sometimes a turn will bring it up 20 volts so i started at half a turn and we'll see what we get yeah half a turn clockwise brought this one up 10 volts so i'm gonna bring it back halfway to where it was and that should land uh somewhere around 122 volts so so i'm going to leave it where it is it's at about 100 123 volts and i actually set the potentiometer back to where it was so i find that kind of interesting that sending it back where it was now results in the right voltage but i think maybe the uh the contact in that potentiometer could have just been a little dirty and by moving it and setting it back we're now getting the expected voltage yeah i'm kidding i'm not going to use this but i do have another i went to the ryobi website for something else the other day and noticed they were selling these for a dollar and 30 cents each so i picked up a bunch so it looks like i can get the pilot jet out without removing the carburetor maybe yeah that one might be the winner there number 78 so the 80 and 79 fit 78 does not so i will drill it out with that but before you do that make sure you can get a replacement jet sometimes you cannot in which case you might be in trouble because if you drill it too much or if the drill bit breaks then you need a new jet and this is a very small drill bit they do break in my case i do have an extra jet so i will give it a try there we go tabby [Music] yeah unfortunately drilling that jet one size up had no noticeable effect so i could keep going but i do have another mikuni carb that i think is in good condition so let me dig that out take a quick peek inside and if it looks good we'll just swap the carbs yeah i think that'll do i'm also going to swap out the air boxes the one that was on here the gasket stayed with the carburetor and this extra has the gasket already on it [Music] [Applause] [Applause] it's amazing the difference a good carburetor makes this engine it's now running very well both with and without a load and the generator is doing exactly what it should you know going into this i expected i had to replace that power head and i kind of did but not quite the way i thought it was gonna turn out luckily i have a bunch of extra rotors one of them happened to be compatible with that stator and brought this thing back to life granted i did have a bit of a scare when one of the legs was not working but as it turns out it was a bad circuit breaker both those have been replaced and this is now a good working generator so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 440,485

Keywords: AVR, Bad Circuit Breaker, Bad Rotor, Broken Wire, Carburetor Cleaning, Clogged Pilot Jet, Drill Pilot Jet, Engine Surging, Fixed, Generator Not Making Electricity, Generator, HU5000, HU905000, Half the Outlets Not Working, Hard Starting, Homelite, Husky, Insulation Test, Load Test, No Power, Ohms Test, Pilot Jet, Powermate, Rotor Removal, Rotor Repair, Set Engine Speed, Small Engine, Surging, Troubleshooting, Ultrasonic Cleaner, Voltage Adjustment, Water in Fuel, Water in Oil

Id: 03ymA2ov-nI

Length: 82min 6sec (4926 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022