Two Generators No Power Output - Same Model, Same Problem?

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home this 3 200 watt etq generator this one was a craigslist find it was listed at 75 and according to the listing it doesn't make power but the engine runs well so worst case this is a parts machine there are lots of good parts but of course before tearing it apart i want to understand what went wrong and see if it can be fixed now the really interesting thing is that a couple days after i brought this home a local subscriber reached out to me and said he had a generator that stopped making power and wanted to know if i could take a look so let me show you what he brought me he brought me a 3200 watt etq generator it is the exact model as the other and is having the same problem the engine runs but there is no power output so let's get both of these started i want to test them and just validate that they both in fact do not make power and go from there find out what's wrong and potentially fix it all right let's give this a try i checked the oil on both of them they are both filled they do need oil changes but it's fine to test with and i checked the throttle plates they are not stuck so let's give it a go [Music] all right this one definitely not making power the only voltage i saw was 2.4 volts and that is residual magnetism so that tells me the rotor on this generator is not powering up so either the rotor is bad or one of the components that supplies the power to the rotor is bad like the brushes the avr or potentially the dpe winding so let's get the other one started and see if that one does the same [Music] [Music] this one also only has residual magnetism that rotor is not trying to power up so whether it's the same cause or not you know i guess that's what we'll find out so let's get these inside i'm going to start with this one run some tests see if i can't figure out why it won't power up let's cut to the chase we'll get the end cover off the generator see if there's anything obvious i know it's hard for you to see but there is nothing obvious the copper color looks excellent i don't see any signs of overheating the wires look to be in good shape so let's uh break out the multimeter and see what that has to say to start with i'm just going to check the main winding and also the connection to the brushes i don't know what the value should be on a generator of this size of this type usually it's between 0.4 and 0.5 ohms on smaller generators like this it could be all the way up to 1 ohm which would still be considered good now the best way to do this is to isolate everything and run your tests in this case i'm just going to do some quick tests with everything in circuit to see if there's any obvious red flags 0.4 ohms 0.5 that seems good let's check it to ground and there is a connection to ground which might be okay because everything is connected and yeah i see a jumper from ground that goes over to here so this is actually a bonded neutral setup so yeah that connection is fine again if you want to do a proper test which we might have to do you would remove that jumper and actually just disconnect all the wires from this wire block and test the coil directly anyway let's get the wires off the brushes we'll test through the brushes to the slip rings and see what the resistance is on that rotor well that's interesting the terminal it just bent i didn't bend it moved huh i don't think that's normal but yeah it's not i can actually see there's a little piece of plastic right here that's broken off so i don't know if that melted or if just the vibration caused it to move it doesn't look melted though huh let's get that one off and we'll test it so and i get nothing through the brushes but based on what i'm seeing i'm hoping it's the brushes that are bad because the other possibility is a bad rotor and that i can't fix so let's get the brushes out test on the slip rings directly and hopefully we get a reading somewhere between 40 and 70 ohms oh wow looks like the brush heated up and it melted the plastic holder allowing it to move out of place so that's actually a good thing you know this does happen sometimes when the brushes arc they generate heat and it melts the plastic so i'm guessing we are going to get a reading on the slip rings and most likely the slip rings have to be cleaned because if it was arcing i mean it could have been a defect in the brushes or maybe a little bit of junk on the slip ring so let's just check the ohms make sure we have a good reading and we do it's 49 ohms so that's good news the rotor is good the stator seems to be good it's just a bad set of brushes so i'm going to pull the spark plug out i'll get a wrench so i can rotate the engine while just holding some scotch brite on the slip rings to clean them up it's a torch it's difficult to show you the slip rings but if you look at the slip ring on your right that one is dirty but it also feels quite rough and i'm sure that was causing the arcing so cleaning it hopefully will get rid of some of that roughness otherwise it could be a chronic problem you know if that's rough and is causing arcing then the brushes are going to heat up and the holder is going to melt so with the spark plug out it should be easy to turn the engine over just with a socket and hold a piece of scotch brite on there just be sure not to knock into the wires that connect to that slip ring they break pretty easily and once broken it is very difficult to repair unfortunately i'm out of the green scotch brite that's what i usually use i've heard pencil erasers also work in this case i'm going to try blue hopefully that's good enough been working at these slip rings for quite a while and they're about as clean as i can get them they're not perfect especially the slip ring on the top there is some pitting and imperfections and it was quite rough you know now it is fairly smooth but i'm not sure if it's smooth enough especially right there the damage is pretty bad you know i don't know if that was caused when the brush overheated or if that was pre-existing and that's what caused the brush to fail in the first place anyway let's get a new set of brushes on there and try this thing out so so spark plug is reinstalled let's see what we get [Music] i think we might be good i did not see any arcing the slip ring it is warm but it's not burning hot it's not any hotter than this bolt is right here or kind of the rest of the housing so i think we might be okay on this one so let's pull the end cover off the other and see what's going on with that one so what do you think same problem with this one nothing obviously wrong with the brush holder and the stator wires look pretty good i don't see any broken lacing color looks decent although down there does look a little suspicious so let's get out the multimeter and see if we can't find out what's wrong with this one on the last generator we had point five point four ohms we're at 0.5.4 so that seems good let's check through the brushes interesting that terminal it is wiggly kind of like the other one and i think i almost see the copper coming through the side so maybe this one did overheat those brushes are stuck pretty good so that's a good sign tells me the brushes most likely are the issue so let's get the avr out of the way and see if we can't get those brushes out look at that exactly the same issue the brush it must have been arching caused the housing to melt and the brush moved out of place all right should be an easy fix let's take a look at the slip rings see what kind of shape they're in i've got the spark plug removed like last time and you can see the slip ring on the right that's the one that had the broken brush and there's a lot of carbon buildup and it doesn't feel too rough maybe a little bit right there this one doesn't feel too bad should clean up pretty well i think they're cleaning up but it is slow the blue scotch brite definitely not as effective as the green i think that's about as good as they're going to get there's a lot of low spots which you can still see the carbon where those spots are these slip rings though they are pretty smooth compared to the ones that were on the other generator if anything i'd say the slip ring on the left is a bit more rough and that one had the good brush so let's get some new brushes on i think we're good to go you make sure you put the positive on the left brush terminal i'm pretty sure this is going to work just like the other generator it's a little late outside now so i can't really run this outside but i'm going to start it real quick and just make sure that light comes on this one scared me for a second i was expecting that light to turn on right away and it didn't but as it turns out the light switch was off so once i turned it on we could see it was making power we were at 119 volts 62 and a half hertz so this generator lives again like the other so the question in my mind is why did these both fail were the brushes poor quality or the slip rings and my money would be on the slip rings at least on the first one we fixed even after cleaning the slip rings you could see they were damaged and i'd say that one more likely than not will cause another brush failure at some point in the future this one the slip rings looked a lot better so i think this one is fixed anyway i wasn't sure where this video was gonna go i really expected this to be a tear down video usually when these stop making power it's because of a bad powerhead but in this case a bad set of brushes is an easy fix and if you have a generator that's not making power check the brushes it could be that simple so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching wow

Channel: James Condon

Views: 398,074

Keywords: Arching, Brushes, Dirty Slip Rings, ETQ, Fixed, Generator, How To, How-To, Insulation Failure, Load Test, Melted, No Output, No Power, Ohms, Residual Magnetism, Resistance, Rotor Test, Scotch Brite, Slip Rings, Small Engine, Stator Test, Stopped Making Power, TG32P31, TG32P31-01, Troubleshooting, AVR, Automatic Voltage Regulator, Voltage Regulator

Id: QXar7YHDwIo

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022