Two Generac Generators with Bad Engines?

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home not one but two generac gp 6500es these are both electric start and fairly low hours i think one of them has seven hours on it and the other one less than 200. that said neither works both have engine problems and assuming the engines come back i think there's a lot of other things to deal with here i mean both batteries are dead both are missing wheels handles the rollover valve here is broken and this one's missing the air filter and air box so yeah there's a few things going on here but i think most importantly we need to find out if either of these engines still work this one has low compression i'm told and this engine is stuck so i'm going to get the wheels on these probably roll this one out of the way and for this video i'm going to focus in on this guy i also want to take a second and thank ken from ken small engine he's the one who found this listing and passed it on to me so thanks ken i appreciate that so let me get you set up a little better and get going okay well it's a lot better than no wheels at all the ones here actually the right size are about a 10 inch wheel but the shaft of that wheel is too large so those wheels are on there kind of sloppy they're pretty dry rod as well so not a permanent solution and then over here it's even worse these are eight inch wheels meant for a generator you know half this size so they don't stand much of a chance but it'll be good enough to test with now i was getting ready to drain the tanks i pulled the caps off of both of these and do see an issue this one's not too bad actually there's a bit of rust but not too bad uh this one on the other hand might be a different story you know i can't even see the bottom of that tank the fuel is just really bad so i was going to drain the tanks but there's really no point in doing that now there is a fuel screen or filter right at the top here in the petcock inside the tank and that's just going to trap everything in there so these tanks have to come off anyway to be cleaned you know that petcock has to be removed tanks cleaned de-rusted i don't even know if these are going to work so just going to get them out of the way we'll come back to those later got both the tanks off and i was going to roll this one out of the way the one here on the left but i just pulled that starter rope and it feels like it has compression so i'm not sure what the seller was talking about and trying to demonstrate to me but it feels pretty good actually so i'm going to spray a little bit of starting fluid into the carb and give that cord a pull see if we get anything from that engine ow maybe a timing issue i just broke that hmm this broke and it kind of kicked back i'm going to try it again maybe with better gloves this time [Applause] it wants to start [Applause] very nice i'd say that's um we got a good engine not sure why i kicked back but maybe i didn't pull it fast enough let's get this one out of the way and check why the other one's stuck when i get that spark plug out potentially it's hydra locked that spark plug is brand new huh it's turning but i don't see really any signs of it being hydro locked yet it's turning very interesting let me get that plugged back in see if it keeps turning okay well it's not getting stuck but it is very hard to turn over you know the compression is very high i have a feeling either the compression release isn't working or maybe the valves need to be adjusted so when i get the compression tester in there i want to see what the compression's at [Music] okay let's give this a try usually these come in at around 60 psi i'm suspecting it's going to be way over that okay well there's our problem we have excellent compression the engine's not stuck but the compression release is definitely not working we're at 135 no 140 psi that's more than double what it should be so let's get the valve cover off and hope it's just a simple adjustment [Music] okay compression test is removed just going to find top dead center using the screwdriver on the compression stroke so the intake valves open and this is the compression stroke and we're at the top and there's a ton of clearance on the exhaust so that's probably it the compression release is on the exhaust side and i mean i don't know what that clearance is but i'd say it's something like thirty thousands it should probably be closer to six so let me get the feel gauges out we'll see where it's at now and close it up some okay give this one a try it is 25 thousandths and it fits in there with just actually no drag whatsoever let's try adding another okay so now i got an 18 and a 17. so that brings it up to 35 thousandths and it fits it's still kind of loose so it's probably closer to 40 thousands i'm not really sure why this is so out of adjustment i mean the adjustment screw is tight i still see the rotator cap on there you know i'd say maybe the valve isn't closing all the way but the compression test was really high so i think the valve is closed not really sure what else would cause that so let me crack this loose we'll adjust this for now to five thousandths and just do another compression test and i set it to six actually okay let's try that compression test again [Applause] beautiful it's like 60 60. perfect you know what's next let's get the plug in see if it'll run yeah i guess i'll put the valve cover back on i don't want to make a mess you know i don't know if this is correct i set it at six chances are it is but i'm not going to torque the cover down because most likely i'm going to have to go back in here anyway yeah it's low glad i checked it let me throw some in there yeah it's better closer to full um that's fine i'm not going to add any more i'm just going to change it anyway assuming it starts nice two for two so we now just have to clean these carbs and these things should run on their own i'm going to hold off a second i'm pulling these carbs this generator here the one that kicked back on me i think is suffering from the same problem of high compression now that this one's been adjusted over here i can tell this one it's much harder to pull over than it should be so i'm going to get the compression tester on it just kind of validate that also i have looked up the specs on these valves it's actually eight thousandths on the exhaust and six on the intake so i've already made the correction over there and torqued that valve cover back on at about 40 inch pounds so i'm going to repeat the process over here [Applause] [Applause] it's a lot of compression so not quite as bad as the other one but it is bad we're at 120 psi it should be 60. so yeah valves need to be adjusted it looks really clean in here so i'm guessing this is the one that supposedly has seven hours on it it looks unused i'm on top dead center again of the compression stroke uh this is the exhaust valve and you can see i mean that gap is huge it's about the same as the other 35 40 000 maybe more you know the rotator cap is still there somehow so i'm going to make the same adjustments here we'll put this thing back together and then we'll clean up the carbs that feels pretty good i'll just double check the intake it should be six thousands and it is so just like the other machine the intake was fine not so much on the exhaust anyway i'm just going to tighten this down a little bit better maybe rotate the engine once i'll double check the clearance but i think we should be good now yeah that's fine you [Applause] beautiful we're at 61 maybe 62 psi and that's where we should be it's much easier to pull over now i'm not going to break my hand i realized i kind of glossed over why adjusting the valves made such a big difference on the compression release and the reason for that is when the engine's spinning slow like when you're pulling it over by hand there's a compression release mechanism which kind of bumps usually the exhaust valve open just a bit to let some of that compression out and then once the engine starts up that compression release mechanism kind of moves out of the way and you have full compression at that point but what was happening is that because the clearance was so big so large on the exhaust side is that that little bump of the exhaust valve wasn't making it meaning you know the push rod was giving the valve a little bump but the rocker never contacted the valve to move it because it was too far away so by decreasing the clearance the compression release can now let a little bit of pressure out making this thing a whole heck of a lot easier and safer to start [Music] so i spilled a lot of that fuel on the ground before i decided to catch it but you know i could see water and what came out and even when i caught with the cup hopefully that focuses but you can see that line down there it's actually not too deep i would say it's 70 water in this cup so that alone would have kept this machine from starting maybe the carb isn't too bad in this one we got green gas no water no debris it smells pretty bad though okay time to place your bets the one on the right had the green fuel that smelled like paint thinner and the one on the left had the water and all the debris i think they're both going to be clogged but not too bad this one i think will be a bit better not bad you so okay that was wrong the green one's worse but i guess the question is how much worse the needle seems to be stuck otherwise it's not too bad that should clean up yeah this one's fine okay okay well the one that was full of water does not have a clogged jet so it probably would have run yeah i'm not seeing anything major here i mean this a little bit of buildup but nothing nothing major so this carburetor actually is in pretty good shape now that it has no water in it this one yeah not so sure about this needle might be shot yeah maybe that might work nope we'll try that again later anyway i'm just going to run through all the uh openings here make sure everything's unclogged you know i'll run through that main jet just in case i can't get it out at least we'll get some fuel through it and actually some some degreaser so that'll help free things up this here is not a jet but the fuel does go in through the bottom and then goes up to the main jet so this has to be clean also gonna wash these one at a time you're not too bad all the green is gone the seat's still a mess gonna try to get this jet out now see if it'll see if it'll come out okay and they're out so good run this through a few more times and uh probably clean the seat up stuff cleaned up pretty well uh this is the one over here that was the bad one that was all green and there's still hints of green you know i think this bowl seal it's it's pretty bad but overall it it came back better than i thought so i was kind of worried that this wasn't gonna come apart nicely and not be viable but i'd say in the condition it's in now it'll run i guess the big question is will the needle and seat play nice and yeah this seal i'll try i'll run with it for now but i might have to come up with something better for that this is the idle screw right here and this this generator doesn't idle so you don't want to make the mistake of driving this in too far you don't want it influencing the throttle at all the only purpose of it really in this application is just to hold down the pilot jet yeah surprisingly the needle and seat are playing nice so this thing should run and not flood everywhere okay that's pretty much it i'm going to do the same thing over here turn it back on in a second get these on the machines so i was passing harbor freight today and i couldn't help myself i stopped got some wheels that are much better than the wheels that i have on there now and these are only seven bucks each not too bad i think the only downside is it's a five-eighths inch shaft this needs a half inch so i also picked up some half inch bolts and some spacers so this should give us what we need to get some good tires on this thing as far as this missing handle goes i took a look online it's not available discontinued so not a big deal i think i have an alternative i actually picked up these handles for another project which i never ended up using but these are supposed to go on the side rails like that in this case the generac expects it in the middle here and i think it'll fit which is perfect because then we have one for each generator as much as i want to bring these outside and try them i can it's the middle of the night not really an option so that'll have to wait till the morning for now i'm going to move on to the tanks i'm going to get the gas out of both tanks get evaporate into the tank the better of the two tanks let that soak for a few days and then start working on the the bad one [Music] well this is the worst of the two tanks now that the fuel's out of it yeah i'm not too concerned it's just surface rust that'll come off uh pretty easily and this one was the better of the two and you can see not too bad so yeah it won't be a big deal you know i'd still say it's probably at least a day soaking in a vapor rust for this one and probably two or three days for this one so okay i've got both generators here set up on either side of the heaters and i'm going to use a 30 amp breakout cord to power the heaters and 120 volt outlets to power the kilowatt i've got the temporary tank hooked up gonna get this one started make sure it runs well and makes power and then we'll move on and check the other 122 volts 59. well 60 hertz gonna speed that up a little bit so yeah not too bad 123 volts almost 59 hertz and no more backfiring [Applause] not too bad it started right up we've got power output the engine speed i bumped it up a bit so things sound pretty decent i think the only thing that surprised me is that we are getting a pup once in a while through the intake so the valves might need to be adjusted potentially lapped the interesting thing is once i put even a light load like a thousand watt load on it that completely goes away so yeah i'd kind of expect it to happen regardless of the load so gonna give that one some thought let's uh give this one a try 122 volts 60.6 hertz not too bad i'm bumping up a little bit more to 61. okay 125 volts 59.1 it's good the engine started right up it sounded good handled the load no issue and this one sounds good there's no backfiring or popping but i can tell we still have a bit of work the carburetor is flooding over so that's okay that's a pretty easy thing to fix i'm gonna get this back inside both of them back in just gonna get the oil out get it changed while it's hot we'll dig in a bit more on why that one's popping there are a lot of reasons for a carburetor to be backfiring like this one is it could be timing related it could be ignition related could be the valves or carburation and i'm leaning towards carburation in this case because couple reasons it doesn't do it it doesn't backfire when the engine's cold it took about a minute before it started and timing and ignition i don't think would be impacted by that or the valves for that matter and i think the thing that seals the deal is the fact that when i apply a light load to the engine the back firing stops the generator hasn't really changed the biggest difference is that the carburetor is now letting more fuel in to support the load so i'm going to get this carburetor off put the leaky one on probably swap the needle while i'm at it and we'll give this thing another try as you can see it is starting to snow i'm going to make this a quick test i did add the air box the air filter just to keep the engine from sucking up the snow and i did swap out the needle so this is the leaky carb that's on here now and it is not leaking so we'll add a new needle to the shopping list [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so as you can see it's not a carb issue it's not running too lean so i'm going to check the valves next i think we can safely rule out the carburetor based on the testing that was just done so that only leaves valves timing and ignition and as you can probably see i pulled the valve cover off again i double checked the valves and they're dead on eight thousandths on the exhaust six on the intake the valves too as far as i can tell they are seating we are getting good compression minimal leak down and i don't think they're sticking so i'm leaning towards it not being a valve issue so we're left with timing and ignition and i think i did find an issue with the ignition side of things so i actually found two issues first one being this is an ngk part number but it is not an ngk plug so that that could be causing an issue this plug is or was brand new i just double checked the gap here and the gap is wrong it's currently set to 18 thousands it should be 30 000. so that's gonna cause a pretty weak spark low voltage a cool spark whatever you want to call it but it's going to have trouble igniting the fuel properly and that kind of makes sense because the way this engine works it actually sparks twice meaning it sparks once on the compression stroke when it's at top dead center it also sparks again at the end of the exhaust stroke when it's switching to the intake stroke and at that point both valves are open and if there's unburned fuel due to a miss on the plug and it it could ignite at that point sending a pop out of the intake so could it be that easy probably not but i do have an ngk that is properly gapped not new but i'm willing to bet it'll work better than this so i'm going to put that in i'm also going to pull the blower housing off i just want to validate kind of the condition of the coil and also the timing so got the engine at top dead center and what i was looking to check was the position of this magnet if things are timed properly this magnet should just be clearing the coil which it is so i think timing is good also the gap between the coil and the flywheel seems to be good as well and since i was in here i thought i'd check the ohms on the coil and that has me a bit more concerned we're at 10.3 thousand ohms now i don't know what the value should be on this on a honda gx390 you know normal range is between six and seven thousand ohms so it seems like this coil could be bad but to be fair it should also be isolated it should be removed from the engine and tested separately but for now i'm just gonna test it with the new plug i don't want to change too many things at once and if it still is acting up we'll try a new coil this is the plug here i'm gonna try as you can see not new far from but it is a good plug and it is gapped properly and this is the plug from the other generator the one that's running well just double checking the gap here and it's a touch under but it is a lot closer to 30 000 than the one i pulled out of this machine so i'll adjust this one too and just put it back in the good machine okay let's see if there's any change in how this runs [Applause] [Applause] it is running much better now it did pop once but over the course of about four minutes that was it so it's a big improvement still not perfect i think we're lean on that carb it's hunting and it's just not enough fuel in there when i give it a little bit of choke the engine actually speeds up the throttle closes a bit and the hunting goes away so that pilot jet most likely needs to be drilled out so we get it back inside and finish this thing up you don't actually need to get the carb off the machine to get the pilot jet out so easy enough to do but something still doesn't quite make sense here this carb is the one from the other machine that ran fine on that machine on this one it's still pupping now when i did do the carb swap i also swapped the gasket between the insulator and the carb just to rule that out so the one thing i didn't check was the condition of the insulator itself as well as the gasket on the other side so i'm just going to take this off again we'll double check we don't have any issues here and then i'll proceed to drill that jet out [Music] yeah the insulator itself looks to be in good shape there's no cracks so the gasket actually stayed on the machine so i'll show you that real quick but that also looks good and there's a view of the gasket in question it looks fine not concerned about that and these do and can break off in these jets so try to go easy before you do this make sure you can get a replacement jet if you do in fact break the bit inside of it yep we're through okay that's pretty much it it's at 16 thousandths hopefully that's not too much so i've got all the parts i need to put these machines together and make them complete got two new batteries a rollover valve a new needle and a new generac air box also i had to get one new fuel petcock for a couple reasons the the filter on one of them was completely destroyed and the fuel valve itself didn't work so we'll get that installed as far as the tanks themselves go they both cleaned up pretty well the better of the two tanks took about 48 hours to clean up and surprisingly the worst of the two tanks only took 36 hours to clean up and i think it cleaned up better than the tank that looked better to start with so there's nothing holding me back i think i have everything i need to put both of these machines completely together make them a hundred percent and then we'll we'll bring them both outside and make sure that everything's working well together so you [Music] and just to make it clear this needle here actually isn't specifically for the generac this is just a replacement needle for a gx 390 a honda and this is what this is a clone of very similar size engine this needle should work just fine these are the two side by side so seems to be the same part so [Music] [Music] you [Applause] yeah not too much left of this filter you know even if the valve worked i don't think you can get replacements for this and even if you can you know how much is that and here's the new so i just did the same thing to this generator on the left as the one on the right they both have new batteries their tanks are reinstalled and connected i think the only difference is that the one here on the left needed a new fuel valve so that's installed and done and the one remaining item is the fuel rollover valve on the top yes i don't know if there's any easy way to uninstall this but there is a lip here that holds it in it's not much a couple thousands all the way around so the important thing is i guess trying to get this old one out is just not to damage the tank then this one should just push right into place i found the broken piece it's actually still in here and i don't want to cut it too short because then it's not going to reach so i'm going to try to get that piece out of there and save this line you i think that's it i mean both of these are back together as far as i know all the issues have been addressed the one minor thing left is really just painting up that recoil black instead of red but it's way too cold can't do that right now so that's going to have to wait you know for now i do want to get it outside make sure that this jet now that it's drilled out is running this engine better also that this needle is functioning the way that it should change plan i've been warming the garage up a bit and i think it is warm enough to get paint on that recoil so i'm going to pull that off right now we'll paint it up and then get it outside okay it's a much nicer day out today i am going to try both of these again the let's see the one that was popping out of the exhaust is this one so that one i need to run at least for a few minutes to see if it's gonna do it again uh this one here is the one with the new needle i know the needle's working but i actually haven't tried the carb on this machine that carb was originally over there so i'm going to start with this one we'll just get it started put a light load on it make sure we're good and then we'll move on to the one with the drilled out pilot jet so it sounds a little fast a little bit fast i'm gonna slow it down yeah 56.8 hertz that's no good well there's good news in this bad i guess we'll start with the good the generator here on the left continues to run well i'd say that one is done the one here on the right it's no longer popping but you know i put a 1500 watt load on it then i took that load off and it sounded like the engine was running fast so i double checked and it was it was a little bit over 63 hertz so i adjusted that down to 61 and a half and then loaded it to 3000 watts and the engine speed dropped way too much it was at i think 56.8 hertz and this is supposed to be a 6500 watt continuous generator so that wasn't even a half load and it was doing pretty poorly so i didn't notice that issue earlier before i drilled out that jet so i think i may have overshot a bit i do have another jet that i have not drilled out so i'm gonna put that one in we'll try restarting it and see if things are any better okay i pulled the drilled jet out i put a standard one in it is a clone jet but let's give it a try okay now we're starting slow [Applause] all right we're at 61 hertz yeah around 59 yeah that's more like it i adjusted the engine speed back to around 61. i think it was around 61 maybe 61.2 loaded it to 3000 watts and we lost about 2 hertz in engine speed and that that's pretty typical for a 3 000 watt load usually it's around 2 hertz maybe 2 and a half hertz is pretty normal so things are going better now i did hear it pop once now that we have kind of the original jet back in but i think i'm kind of splitting hairs at this point i am kind of curious though how this will do under a 6 000 watt load so i'm gonna get a few more space heaters out here and we'll put it to the test all right let's give this another try i have a 6000 watt load here i mean technically it's actually probably closer to 6200 watts maybe 63. so this would be a very good test i'm hopeful that it stays above 58 hertz but under this kind of load i'd be happy with anywhere above 57 hertz [Music] [Music] 57 and a half it's 7.6 yeah that's not bad [Music] [Applause] okay good it did just fine under a full load we held at about 57 and a half hertz and you got to remember too before loading this up we were only at about 61. hertz so that unloaded speed could be bumped up a little bit more to 62 and then there'd be no issue maintaining 58 hertz went under a full load but i'm pretty happy with the way things are at given where we started with this thing now before starting it the last time i did pull the pilot jet out again it didn't feel quite right when i installed it meaning when i put it in the carb and pushed it down when i let go it kind of sprung back out a little bit of the carburetor so i ended up basically just rotating it 180 degrees put it back in and it seated in place it didn't spring back so i think that most likely was just an intake leak due to the way this jet was installed and that's why it was lean and that's why it was popping so this one is now running well we have two good generators from what was supposed to be one with a stuck engine and the other with no compression so yeah far from it these things are in pretty good shape so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 495,155

Keywords: Airbox, Bad Fuel, Bad Gas, Battery Replacement, Carburetor, Compression Release Valve, Drill Jet, Evaporust, Fuel Petcock, Fuel Valve, GP6500, GP6500e, Generac, Generator, Gentent Folding Handle Kit, High Compression, Kickback, Load Test, Low Compress, ML9-12, Popping Out of Intake, Rollover Valve, Rusted Fuel Tank, Rusted Gas Tank, Set Generator Hertz, Spark Plug, Stuck Needle, Timing, Troubleshooting, Valve Adjustment, Valve Clearance, Water in Fuel, Will not start

Id: rLGHQ6Ka6F0

Length: 80min 48sec (4848 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021