Powermate Generator Troubleshooting - Won't Start

hey guys welcome back so today we got a coleman power maid generator it's 5,000 watt generator with a Subaru engine and pretty much the normal story it will not start when I want to buy it the person selling it did demonstrate that it runs with starting fluid and the engine sounded good but it would only run for a few seconds so not long enough to validate that it makes power but long enough to know that it has spark so first order is obviously to get that carb off get get it cleaned up get it running and make sure it makes power and assuming that all checks out then there's number of things on here that do need to be addressed just starting with the front here this GFCI outlet does not work thus the exes I did check the oil it's full but very dark Christus taters pretty rusty so that might need to be lightly sanded and painted coming around to the engine side obviously recoil it's a little bit loose the on/off switch works but when you flip it to on it actually can be turned past on which is then off again so you know I think I have an extra switch that we can deal with that carburetor obviously we're going to pull that off and clean it the choke here feels weird and sound if you can see by it it's pretty loose so something isn't quite right there so when I take the carb apart I'll take a closer look at what's going on there coming around to this side nothing obvious wrong other than dirty and rusty and the wheels the axles are bent and the wheels arrested so there's a bunch of things here that need to be dealt with including probably cutting this lock off since I don't have the combination but let's start with the carburetor and see what we get all right so this carburetor has a drain screw so I'm gonna pull that off and just see if maybe it's just water this machine was stored outside so I'm sure water has gotten into the system all right so it's kind of hard to see I think on camera but you see that line running across not the top not the very top of the cup here but this line down there that's water and you can kind of see but that goes pretty high up on the on the bottom side as well so I mean half of what came out of the carburetor is water and that is enough to keep this machine from running and I would almost bet money on it that if I tried to start it right now that it would run whether it would run perfectly I don't know but you know this machine's probably about ten years old and you know I think I probably should clean it of course if I don't clean it it'll need to be cleaned right and if I clean it it probably will not need to be cleaned but anyway I'm gonna I'm gonna pop it off anyway and just give it a bath [Applause] this came off pretty easily usually it's like stuck the gasket is stuck even the airbox came off real easily so in cleanly so I don't know if someone's been in here or kind of what the story is there but anyway let me get this clamp off and open up the carb what the heck that looks like a piece of cardboard I won't judge not too bad yeah that Jets clean a little bit of junk in there okay good so get everything off that's going to come off I'm just gonna clean this up now in the ultrasonic you all right so I went to siphon the fuel out I thought all the water that was gonna come out had come out in the carburetor but I was wrong I just pumped some into this Cup I don't know if you can see this but only in that very very top like quarter of an inch is actually gas everything underneath it I think is water so this whole take has to be drained this gas is bad and it has to be recycled all right so I'm gonna start with the pilot jet I just want to make sure it's all the way in there all right this is the main jet it's brass it's a soft metal you do not want to tighten this too tight okay good let's put it back on okay I know I was joking a little bit about this right here this is definitely a cereal box I can see a K down there so for all I know it's special K but they did a good job cutting out this diameter and I think it's going to be just fine for testing and of course if it runs all right I will purchase the correct gasket for that location all right so the filter was missing from the airbox I do have a Subaru filter handy so I'm gonna put that in these filters are supposed to be oiled all right nothing nice to stay here but let's uh fire this thing up and see what it does alright it starts and runs it's actually hard to find the off position on that switch so probably dig into that next the engine does sound slow so I'm going to go get the the Hertz meter and see what it's running it [Music] okay so I brought it up to sixty almost I had to turn that throttle spring quite a bit to do that so I'm not sure if there's something wrong with that spring so I'm gonna bring it inside and take a closer look alright so just taking a closer look here I did turn this in quite a bit I might see what the clean threads are you know so it was all the way out there it was running at around 52 Hertz so I did bring it in quite a bit you know the throttle spring does seem kind of weak so I'm guessing there's nothing really bad going on here anyway since the engines warm I am changing this old oil and it was kind of a pain to start because this recoil wasn't going all the way in and it just doesn't have enough spring to it so definitely gonna work on this next as well as the switch make it a lot easier to start and a lot easier to shut off [Applause] [Music] [Applause] alright so this original switch only has one wire so I was wondering how is it giving the ground and what I can tell it's using the body of the blower housing to do that this other switch I have has two wires and I was testing you know for continuity between the wires when the switch is set to OFF couldn't get it then finally realize there's a brass terminal here so I like the original switch it gets the ground from the blower housing and when I switch this to two off the black wire is connected to ground this orange wire I can't figure out what it does and in this case I don't think I need it so I'm just going to connect the black to the black and tighten it down and we should be good to go okay so now that the ignition on/off switch is taken care of I am going to see if I can replace this I went to the hardware store and got a GFI outlet 20 amp just like this one this just so you know it these buttons do not function there's no power output and when you plug something in nothing's grabbing the Prague's you know the plug just kind of falls out so this plug is useless and potentially dangerous the way that it is now so in order to get to this I do need to remove these screws which look pretty rusted in so hopefully that comes off without a fight and also on the back of this panel you can unplug you know the wires coming from the stator just like that so let me get your set up in a stand and see if those screws are going to come out of there [Music] okay not too bad I did have to loosen the gas tank to get the clearance to get the that control panel out which probably isn't a bad thing this will allow me to kind of sand down that stator and throw a little bit of paint on it I'm not sure why but this is little plastic tabs here which I think are so if you're pushing wires and on each side it kind of keeps them separated but in this case I need it to go in flat and that piece of plastic is gonna be a problem but not anymore okay exes are gone new outlet installed this is pretty much done I think I'm gonna leave it off for now and just you know while I have this thing well I'll just brush this loose rust off and I'll probably put a little bit of paint on there okay so both of these axles up for these wheels are bent pretty badly and this wheel is also arrested pretty badly so I did have a matching wheel from a similar generator that had a bad stator so I'm going to swap the wheels out and see if this bolt will work with this which will straighten that roll out and then I just need to find another bolt for the other side in the wheels should be then in good shape all right so a few things real quick here I did just take the tank off allows better access to the stator you know I've lightly brushed all the loose rust off so I'm gonna put a little bit of paint on there I also removed the muffler mostly so that I could gain access over here to paint and you know I took a quick look online a new new muffler is about $20 and I was thinking of just spending the $20 get a nice new muffler instead of that rusty thing that was on there but I guess before I do that I do have some stove paint that I'm gonna try under I mean there's nothing wrong with this mechanically I already knocked off a lot of the rock a lot of the loose rust so I'm gonna keep going and just get it you know as smooth as I can put some stove paint on there and see what happens worst case I'll spend the 20 bucks on a new muffler but who knows it's worth a try to bring this one neck all right so this is the spark arrestor these do need to be cleaned once in a while I don't know how well it shows up this one's not too bad but there is some carbon buildup I've seen generators where it gets really bad to the point where the engine will not run all right so this muffler came out a lot better than I kind of imagined so I'm glad I did that you know painting it instead of buying a new one also the stator came out really well it almost looks too good compared to the rest of the machine so anyway I'm very satisfied with how both of these things came out so now I'm just gonna put the machine back together and run it for a bit and see how this holds out under temperature you [Music] okay cut the proper gasket now see okay I also ordered a new throttle spring so I'm going to turn this back to where it was you know put the new spring on and then reset the the engine speed okay so we got the new gasket the new spring I'm just gonna tighten the airbox back on and bring it out and see what it does okay so hopefully this will be the final test really just looking to see that the new GFCI outlet works I'm also going to test it by simulating a short want to make sure it shuts off I also want to see how that new paint holds up on the muffler as well as reset the engine speed with the new spring so let's give it a go all right so everything's working as expected it's raining now so I'm gonna be wrapping up anyway I hope this helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 37,216

Rating: 4.9315705 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: K78Jhd03ELg

Length: 33min 17sec (1997 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019