Predator Generator Not Making Power

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home this predator generator this one was listed for parts only and only cost 50 bucks the engine's good but it doesn't make power and apparently it has never made power you know the person who sold this to me purchased this new didn't use it until a couple years later and when he did finally go to use it discovered that it doesn't make any power whatsoever so he did replace the avr still nothing uh he measured the voltage out of the outlets and it wasn't zero but it was 2.5 volts out of the 120 and that's basically residual magnetism so the rotor is not powering up you know it could be a bad rotor bad brushes bad avr or a bad dpe winding and he's already replaced the avr so most likely this is terminal but you know before tearing this thing down for parts i'm just going to take you through the process of determining kind of where the point of failure is you know that should help you if you're dealing with something similar so i'm going to check the health of the stator through the outlets this works on both brushed and brushless generators now this is 240 volt generator which means it has two 120 coils so they both have to be tested it's pretty visual here as far as which coil is which but if you're not sure just check them all and as far as the readings that you'll get on this i know this predator in particular should test at about one ohm you know most generators that are 5000 watts or above test at like half an ohm but this one and several other brands i've tested of this size come in closer to an ohm anyway before doing the test check the resistance of your meter and just note what that is in my case it's 0.1 so i can subtract that from any reading i get down here and keep in mind too this is a low voltage test it may look good but it doesn't guarantee it's good but if it tests bad then it's bad so 0.9.8 subtract 0.1 we're close to 0.7 so that is a good reading check the other leg we're about the same so from the outside the stator looks good what i want to do down here is test the resistance at the brushes and this is kind of in the way so i'm just going to cut the zip tie to move the wires out of the way and then i'll show you better what i'm doing so it is hard to see but the brushes are in here and there's two wires going to it the blue one in this case is the positive which is marked here and the yellow is the negative if you do disconnect these make sure you take note this is dc going in so it is polarity sensitive and now i'm going to check the resistance of the rotor generally 70 ohms is the highest i see for a good rotor and the lowest i've seen is about 7 ohms so if it's within that range i'll be pretty happy otherwise we might have a problem yeah we get nothing at all either the brushes are bad or the rotor is bad so when i get the brushes out we'll try directly to the slip rings now the brushes look okay it could be a wire broken you can test that same way with the ohms but i'm going to go right to the slip rings and see what we get yeah still nothing i would say we have a broken wire on the rotor generally rotors don't melt down but they spin at 3600 rpm and what happens is usually where the wire connects to the slip ring there's a solder joint or a shoulder joint depending upon where you're from and that tends to break there's not much more i can do without getting the stator off so i'm going to get the fuel tank out of the way that'll give me better access to down here most likely the muffler has to be removed then i can get these bolts out holding the stator in and pull it off so [Music] you you you know with the bolts undone i can lift the stator up and i'm going to support the engine with a piece of wood because two of the mounts are on this side and once the stator is removed the engine's just going to want to flop over those boards will help keep the engine upright i'm going to use a gear puller on the ball bearing sometimes they come out without a puller but usually you need something and don't crank down too hard this is aluminum it cracks very easily yeah the end housing is coming off usually that's bolted to the stator and they come off as one piece since that's the case i'm going to have to remove this wire block that has all the stator wires on it so that way the end housing can come off without tugging on those wires uh [Music] uh this is the wire running from the slip ring on the other side comes over here and it looks like it's just twisted together and it's all corroded in fact it seems like it's broken yeah there we go i don't know what the reading should be for this rotor but 18 ohms seems reasonable so the problem is right here and unfortunately there's really not enough good wire to work with i mean if there was you know an extra inch or so you could just run another wire over reattach it but that's not the case it's broken right down here right before it goes in here and all these wires they're basically glued together with an enamel or a varnish and you can't just peel a wire out to get more slack yeah unfortunately i think this rotor is done although i can't save the rotor we have a perfectly good engine so i'm going to separate the rotor from the engine uh that way i can basically have it ready to go the next time i pick up a generator of this size that needs an engine so i'm going to fill the cylinder with rope just going to find the bottom of the stroke which is right there so the good news is there's threads on this should make it pretty easy to remove but i've said that before anyway i don't remember exactly the size of this bolt i'll figure it out and just put it on the screen for you but i think the bigger issue is that this bolt is pretty much the same size as the shaft here and if i just use a rod that's this size i'm going to push right into the threads on the crank and destroy them so what i need to do here is actually get the engine off stand it up and use water to build up some hydraulic pressure and pop it off the tapered shaft you want to wrap it at least seven or eight turns really the more the better as long as the bolt still fits and make sure it's tight all right we'll try that do and there we go and not too bad for 50 bucks you know we got a good predator engine that control panel a good stator what's left of the frame and a fuel tank now potentially this could be fixed if i could buy a new rotor generally it's cost prohibitive and in the case of predator i can't even find a parts diagram never mind parts for the generator you know the engine there's plenty of aftermarket stuff and it is just a honda clone so most likely honda stuff would fit in that but that's not the issue here so i just wanted to turn the camera on real quick and show you kind of how to troubleshoot a no power situation and in this case it's terminal so uh now you know how to break down a predator hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 19,259

Rating: 4.9298892 out of 5

Keywords: AVR, Bad Power Head, Bad Rotor, Bad Stator, Does Not Power Up, Generator Head, Generator No Power, Generator, No Output, No Power Output, No Power, Outlets Do Not Work, Predator Generator, Small Engine, Troubleshooting

Id: NHjtds1vHe4

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020