Propane Generator Will Not Start - Feels Like Low Compression

hey guys welcome back so today brought home the 6 000 watt generator made by all power this one is powered by propane only it is not a tri-fuel setup and this one i don't know much about a local subscriber had picked this up i think either from a friend or a neighbor after it stopped working and he offered it to me for a hundred bucks so i took him up on it anyway when i went to go pick it up i could tell there were issues with the engine you know going into it i had assumed maybe the regulator but the engine when pulling it over had little to no compression and now the recoil isn't grabbing the cup at all so i think i'm going to start by just getting this recoil assembly off we'll see what's going on under there and then i want to get the spark plug out pull the engine over see if the piston is moving and just go from there so let me get you set up a little bit better and get going on this well that's a problem the entire assembly here is broken so not an issue i've got more i think i'll start by vacuuming this out there's a bunch of um leaves in here [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] we'll give this one a try this is from a predator generator but like this one it's just a clone of a honda gx390 so this part should be interchangeable yeah very little compression if any but i do hear the piston going up and down at least i think i do so let's take a peek okay good hopefully you could see that but the piston it is going up and down so let's just throw the compression tester on there and see what we get [Music] nothing so we definitely have no compression pistons going up and down it might just be a valve issue so let's get that cover off and take a look at the valves it's on there that is one stuck valve cover it's probably not a good thing okay well that is a problem this is the intake valve and the exhaust valve so the exhaust valve is kind of halfway off and the intake is completely off and i can tell it's a worn push hard guide i've seen this before not a great design this is a clone of a honda and is actually a honda design but this metal plate here is what holds the push rods in place and holds the valves in place so if this plate here fails then the rocker it's allowed to rotate out of place and this is what happens but this should be an easy fix so let's loosen these jam nuts here we'll just probably remove the rockers all together because we need to get better access to this plate and replace it with a new one just putting this here to help prevent losing anything in the engine like one of these nuts or the rotator cap which maybe isn't a rotator cap not sure but we'll leave it there for now there we go that was really tight push rods could be bent we'll check those that one actually looks pretty good yeah push rods look to be good this is a rotator cap and you need to put that back a lot of people make that mistake they leave the cap off and then the valve does not contact the stem properly leading to damage so that's it this cheap little five dollar part is what caused this generator to lose compression and this is an easy fix if caught in time uh what can happen and does happen is that valves get bent broken and even dropped into the engine in which case the whole engine is trashed but i think we caught this one in time so let me pause it here i'm gonna look around i think i might have a new one of these otherwise i definitely have a used one that's in good condition so yeah let me take a look and see what i have i don't have a new one but i do have a used one from a 420cc predator engine and the pushrod guide should be interchangeable so if this one's in good shape we'll just move it over and we should be good to go yeah this one looks to be good not sure what that is but i see a lot of it i don't know maybe a bug i think that's all of it i'm going to double check the torque spec on this i don't have the specs for this exact engine but i do have a couple manuals for honda clones and i think they specify about 200 inch pounds on these studs but i'm just gonna double check according to the manual it should be 24 newton meters which is 212 inch pounds i'm going to flip the push rods around this was the section of the push rod that was rubbing against the old plate you can see there is a bit of wear but if i flip it around i think that'll prevent this from happening again i'll do the same thing with this push rod just reverse the direction of it i'm going to rotate the engine make sure it's on the tap it and it is so okay got them both set pretty much at zero clearance so we'll set the clearance in a minute on this engine i think it's between four and six thousandths on the intake and six and eight on the exhaust but let's just pull it over like this i'll throw the spark plug in real quick or actually the compression tester and see if we have compression oh yeah i can feel it six [Applause] we're at i'd say about 35 psi which is low it has a compression release it should be closer to 60 but that exhaust valve is tight and that's going to let too much compression out so let me loosen it a bit i'll try this again let's try it like that yeah there we go we're at 60 psi exactly so i think we're going to be good let's set these valves properly and button it back up and try starting it to set the clearance you should be on top dead center just a touch past top dead center on the compression stroke and a lot of people don't realize the piston comes to the top twice once it's the compression stroke the other time it's the exhaust stroke and you'll see valve overlap when that's happening you don't want to set the valves on that stroke because you'll be setting them wrong the foolproof way to do this though is to just pull the engine over until one of the valves is open so right now the exhaust is open which means we can set the intake and that is pretty foolproof so i recommend doing it that way if you're not sure and the intake should be between four and six thousandths i'm gonna aim right in the middle at five if anything i'd rather have it a little loose than a little tight that feels good four thousands fits five feels pretty good has a bit of drag the six does not fit so that intake it's right at five thousandths that is fine so let's turn the engine over until the intake opens we'll set that exhaust to seven let's see where it's at this is a six yep that's a loose the seven loose eight loose [Music] all right let's check the exhaust six thousandths of an inch that fits just fine what is this a seven seven has a lot of drag and an eight does not fit so i would call that good so the valves they're set just put a little oil in here it looks pretty dry so i don't think this has been run in quite a while [Music] and that theoretically is it the engine should start and run assuming everything else is good so let's get it outside get it started see how the engine sounds and test the generator output pretty much ready to go i've got 6000 watts on standby kilowatts plugged in but even though this says 6 000 watts this is not a 6000 watt generator it is a 5 000 watt generator so i'm not gonna load it to 6000 watts at least not right away i might try it because it is a 13 horse engine so it should handle i would think the 6000 watts you know whether the powerhead and the circuit breakers are going to like it i don't know but let's get the propane connected so far so good just purging the air from the system so it should be ready to start i guess let's check the oil yeah it's a little low so i'm going to add some oil and then i'll try starting it that should be good i'm gonna change it anyway just wanted to make sure it had enough [Music] [Applause] well considering where we started we are miles ahead you know it took a few pulls but once started the engine sounded good but it was running fast you know somebody at some point i think cranked up the tension on that governor spring so i backed it off brought the engine speed down to 62 hertz and then load tested it under a 3 000 watt load it held right at 60 hertz brought it up to the max of 5000 watts and the engine speed was holding just fine at 58 hertz and then i exceeded it i went to 6 000 watts and the engine kept running you know it sounded pretty good but it was surging a bit i think ultimately the regulator might be the limitation as far as what this engine can do but yeah not too bad but i did notice a problem over here a bunch of oil came out on the ground and i think it's coming from this valve cover so maybe it's just a bad seal or i didn't put it on the right way so we'll double check that and i think once that's done mechanically and electrically we'll be at a hundred percent really just need to deal with everything else there is a lot of rust here so this is going to need a bit of paint and i want to get a battery installed test out the electric start but for now i'm going to roll this inside get the oil changed while it's hot yeah there's some metallic in that oil i don't like seeing that but it's hard to say if there's a problem here could be the first oil change this has ever had and there was some wear on that push rod guide so yeah not sure but we've got some good oil in there now yeah i don't know doesn't look bad but the breather is definitely bad there's a bunch of electrical tape on it and it's torn right there i mean that's not where the oil was coming from it was definitely the cover yeah it doesn't feel bad the seal but i think i have a new one of these so we'll just swap it out i know this one was stuck pretty badly onto the engine so might just be time for a new one actually i didn't have a new one had a used one but it's not quite the same so i'm just going to try reseeding this and we'll give this one another shot so all right we'll give that a shot and while we're here i'm gonna get that replaced i have this part from generac which should be compatible with this do so do i'm going to start this again let it run for like 10 maybe 15 minutes and see how it does i've kind of parked it right next to the oil stain that it made earlier so yeah i think it'll be pretty obvious if it is leaking but i have a feeling i just didn't tighten it down enough maybe not so not starting for some reason so i think getting the electric start working just moved up in the priority list i'm going to clean up these terminals drop a battery in there and try it that way do hey okay well the electric start works fine but the generator it is not starting and as far as i can tell i still have compression for sure and i can smell the propane so i think maybe we have an issue with spark all right i rolled it in the garage just so we could see a little better if it has spark very weak spark so i'm not sure what's going on it could be a bad coil maybe a bad boot bad plug or something's grounding the coil out so i'm going to double check the plug gap when i had the plug out earlier the gap looked small and on propane it should be smaller than normal usually this would be 30 thousandths but with propane i'd say between 20 and 25 would be normal so yeah let's take a look [Applause] got good spark on that plug so i'm not sure about this one as far as what's going on uh let's get the other spark tester out that one it actually has to jump a gap of a quarter inch and that's really testing the voltage to see if it's high enough to jump the gap when under compression right not sure what to think on this one the spark it's a little intermittent it's a little slow to start sparking but once it does it seems to be fairly consistent so i'm going to check the ohms of the secondary coil i haven't looked up the value on this one in particular but i think it should be around 6000 ohms so we'll go through the spark plug wire seems decent so i don't think it's spark the plug is sparking it can jump the gap yeah it was a little weak looking on the light but i don't think sparks the issue let's try starting it again [Applause] [Applause] i wish i could take credit for this one but i didn't really fix anything here but it starts so the only thing that's really changed is that the engine is fully cooled down at this point so maybe there is a coil issue when it's hot we'll have to test that some more but for now let's roll this back outside we'll get it running again hopefully and see if that oil leak has stopped hmm there's no spark it's maybe jumped the gap once when i just turned it over and that is it so yeah maybe maybe an oil sensor issue i'm not sure the driveway is not 100 level and yeah there's no indicator here if that's the issue so i'm gonna unplug the black wire coming from the oil module and see if we get spark back and that would be a no i saw maybe two sparks and that's not enough to start the engine so yeah i don't think we have too many options although this wire right here is probably from the ignition switch going down to the coil so let's unplug that as well see if that makes any difference [Applause] [Applause] nope the spark it's intermittent at best and that's what the oil module and the kill from the ignition unplugged so there's nothing grounding that coil out so i think we have a bad coil to get to the ignition coil i need to pull off this blower housing and i can't do that unless i get the air box off and potentially the carburetor as well so we'll get this off we'll loosen the bolts from the blower housing and see if we can't squeeze it out of there yeah it might come off [Music] that gap looks pretty big between the flywheel and the magnet it's supposed to be about i think ten thousands that looks to be about twice that so yeah let's just check the clearance see how big that gap is that was 20 thousands 24 thousands fits just fine too so i think i'm going to leave the coil and decrease that gap see if that fixes the issue yeah clearance is much better now so that's probably all it was let's double check the spark see if it's any stronger much better that was much better so i'm gonna leave this coil here i don't think it's bad based on what i saw with the gap so i guess before putting it all back together i noticed the anti-surge spring it is not connected to the carburetor so we'll get that fixed reassemble everything and then bring it outside to see if that oil leak is fixed you you you [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay that's promising i don't want to call it fixed but it is starting at least now consistently without issues so yeah i think i need to get this back outside run it at least for 10 or 15 minutes check for oil leaks and shut it down let it heat soak a bit and then try restarting it and hopefully this spark issue is a thing of the past let's try this again hopefully it starts this time and i'll run it for at least 10 minutes with a 3 000 watt load and hopefully have no oil leaks [Music] okay good i think we're out of the woods on this one it started ran just fine and handled a 3 000 watt load for just over 10 minutes and more importantly there's no leak anymore from the valve cover so i think the first time i put that cover back on i just didn't tighten it down enough so at this point i'd say we're a hundred percent mechanically and electrically really the only thing i need to do is clean this up there's a lot of rust on this generator i wouldn't say it's terrible but yeah you can tell it's been left outside so we'll get this inside try to clean this stuff up and i also need to secure that battery i don't think i'm gonna go too crazy painting this up it really isn't that bad with the exception of these panels up here i think the rest of it has very minor rust issues you know a little spot right there a little bit under the battery and some right there of course the wheels have some rust but you know i'm not trying to make this perfect i just want to clean it up a bit probably get the worst of it taken care of so you know i haven't decided yet if i'm just going to remove these all together or try to paint them up but you know the rust is pretty bad it goes under the stickers so those would have to be removed and painted black which i'm not sure is going to look much better than not having them there at all so i'm gonna get those off we'll take a look to see what it looks like get the battery off the starter recoil i did find the parts i needed to fix it but i kind of like that one better so i'm gonna leave that one there anyway let's start getting this thing apart and prepping it for a bit of paint yeah i don't think that looks very good without that at all so i'm going to temporarily kind of hang that back on there get the heat gun out try to get the sticker off we'll do the same on both sides and just keep going [Applause] you so [Applause] [Applause] so [Music] those panels came out pretty well but to be honest that first coat of paint you saw me put on there did not dry so well so i'm not sure why that was it was supposed to be a satin black but i put the black primer on first and then i put the satin on and it dried very uneven meaning some spots were gloss others were flat and everywhere in between so i ended up sanding it again and this time i put flat black on the finish seems to be a lot better so i think we're just about ready to get this thing together it's been cleaned up you know it's not perfect it does need a little bit more work but you know it's looking pretty good and the wheels as well i did wire wheel them and the majority of that rust came off [Music] this strap's a little bit long but i think it'll work out well guys that's pretty much it i mean this one was a fairly easy fix it just needed a new push rod guide and luckily it didn't take out the valves when that guide failed because that can happen but this was not the case anyway once that was fixed kind of got thrown for a loop with the spark issue i'm not sure how the coil got gapped the way that it was because it would have never run reliably so potentially it came that way from the factory or maybe someone adjusted it trying to troubleshoot that no run condition but either way it is fixed now and we have a good running machine so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching wow

Channel: James Condon

Views: 331,816

Keywords: APG3650CN, All Power, AllPower, Breather Hose, Compression Test, Fixed, Generator, Hertz, How To, How-To, Ignition Coil Gap, Low Compression No Compression, No Spark, Propane Generator, Propane, Push Rod Guide, Push Rod, Rocker, Small Engine, Spark Test, Spark Tester, Troubleshooting, Valve Lash, Volts, Weak Spark, Will Not Run, Won't Start

Id: XUrXqXYqdEA

Length: 67min 7sec (4027 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022