Two Junkyard Champion Generators - Scrap Metal?

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home two champion generators these were at a salvage yard waiting basically to be melted down and i have no idea if either of these can be saved or what the problems are with them other than the obvious you know both are missing parts specifically the carburetor the air box the recoil assemblies and both of these are electric start but neither one has a battery or the cables for the battery all that said not too concerned about the missing parts these are honda clones those parts are fairly cheap i think the bigger issue here is that these are also damaged if you look here on the top the one on the right definitely took a pretty big blow it kind of crushed the tank on this side crushed the frame and you know overall this frame isn't in great shape you know that said if the engine or the power head is good then it will have paid for both of these i did pay 75 bucks each and really haven't done anything to them other than turn the engine over by hand and this one has compression and i'd say can be made to run again the one on the left not so sure there is no compression the spark plug is in but that said i do hear a pulse of air coming out of this breather tube so i don't think the piston's blown most likely it's a valve issue so i'm going to start with this one i want to get the valve cover off and take a look at those valves see if we can't figure out what's going on well that's a problem well it's kind of hard to get the good angle here to show you what's going on but this valve spring you can see it's all bunched up this valve is actually hanging open whereas that one is closed so i'm going to get this rocker out of the way we'll try tapping it a bit and see if we can't get that to free up just want to get that rotator cap out before i lose it well it went in more yeah it's not really doing too much other than going in further and then i can get it to kind of pop back to where it was i might be making a little bit of progress but you know i'm thinking the valve is most likely bent i don't think it's going to come out on its own so i think we need to get the head off so in order to get the head off we need to free it up which means removing the exhaust removing this heat shield here potentially the blower housing if there was a carburetor that would also have to come off so we'll free that up but i think i'm going to start with just getting the tank out of the way that'll kind of give a better view of what's going on down here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you [Music] here's a close-up look at the engine block i mean it is spotless there's no dirt no corrosion no oil you know i haven't found a date code on this yet but you know despite the condition of the frame and the exhaust valve the engine and the generator head look to be in pretty good shape and given that the exhaust valve is stuck i think it's a pretty safe assumption that this power head is probably good [Applause] you i think the blower housing is hanging things up so just going to remove a few bolts there and get that out of the way it actually looks pretty decent you know i was expecting the piston to have some damage on it on the left side where the valve may have been contacting it but it looks good you know cylinder also looks good and as far as the valve itself it's it's not really that bad i was expecting it to be bent or visibly damaged but i'm not seeing that so let's get this up on the bench and see if we can't free this valve up so i've been spraying a lot of pb blaster in here to give it a fighting chance if you have a brass rod this would be a good time to use it i actually don't so i'm going to tap on it a bit with this plastic hammer and see if i can't get it to pop in and it did so it looks like it was just rust it looks like the valve stem itself rusted up not too bad though all right and it's not bent i'm just going to clean it up try putting it back in and see how it how it does just using wd-40 and a bit of scotch brite you yeah i'd say that was an easy fix it's moving quite well now so i'm going to take a minute i want to lap the valves clean this up while it's off and i do need to get a new head gasket for this you uh and we get a good line going all the way around so that's good it's making good contact with the seat uh okay that one looks good too so we'll get this thing back together i'm going to do the exhaust valve a little more i shouldn't be able to turn it while pushing down on it and i can so it's not making very good contact cannot do that with the intake yeah it's better it doesn't spin anymore so this is ready to put back together and i was wrong about the head gasket it's actually a metal head gasket and it's in very good condition so that can be reused i'm just going to place this under the exhaust valve to keep it closed while trying to get the spring on just decreasing the surface and i've already done the same on the engine side i don't have the service manual for this engine at least i don't think i do i do have a rotto service manual which this very well could be i think that's the problem with a lot of these chinese clones they don't put their name on it but according to that manual this size engine these bolts should be tightened in a cross pattern up to 40 newton meters which is about 29 foot-pounds and it does say to do it in increments two or three increments so i'm going to start at 100 inch pounds and then bring it up to 20 and then finally 29. you i don't have a spec for what these rockers should be tightened to but for an engine this size the bolt this size i would think about 100 inch pounds should do it yeah clearance feels pretty good there's a little bit of clearance on each definitely not too excessive they could be a bit tight so double check those yeah they're both tight according to the ratto manual the intake should be around five thousandths which is what this is in the exhaust around seven if you're not sure usually setting them around five is a pretty good guess and in this case it should be five and seven yeah we've got got pretty good compression excellent [Music] so [Applause] you so i don't have the correct carburetor for this engine and it's easy enough to get they're about 20 bucks but i do have an oem honda carb which should bolt on okay now this one actually was giving me a little bit of trouble running lean on a gx390 most likely it's not going to run this one perfectly but you know i think it'll be good enough to get this thing started just so that we can validate that it makes power i think the other complication here is that the choke actually is expecting a whole mechanism up here that's missing so there's really nothing to click this choke in place so i'll just have to hold it once it's running and then i think the other big unknown here is the fact that i don't have the servo choke control is the brain box and this generator gonna sense that and do something like shut the engine down i'm not sure but we'll give this one a try and see what happens so foreign i'm going to steal this recoil from this powermate generator this is a honda clone as well and i'm pretty sure this will bolt on to the champion all right got the iv bottle hooked up and the light as well so ready to give this thing a try you know i'm pretty sure it'll run i think it will run a bit lean and that choke is going to give me some trouble but that's okay i just want to see that it runs and makes power and then we'll go from there [Applause] makes power 61.8 122.6 not bad not bad all right well this one caught me by surprise i i knew it would run but i didn't think it was going to run as well as this i mean it started right up and i was able to turn the choke off right away and the engine did just fine and the generator makes power we were close to i think it was 62 hertz unloaded and it held at around 60.8 at a 1500 watt load so we're we're doing pretty well so i'm gonna get this back inside i want to place an order get all the missing parts and then we'll finish this thing up all right all the bits and pieces have shown up and are ready to be installed now these are not champion specific parts but they are honda gx390 clone parts and should fit on here so let's bolt them up and see how they fit hmm so so [Music] all right well there is a couple oversights here first being really the air box it's just not right for this engine even though it bolts on fine you know there's a major flaw here and that's the choke lever the choke lever although it fits in and works the back of the box is supposed to have a tab to keep that choke lever from falling off and this box doesn't have it so that choke lever is not going to stay in place and even if that wasn't an issue i guess the more minor problem here is that this box needs to be bolted on six bolts in total and it didn't come with the bolts that is a problem i've had with these before and i completely forgot about it so i don't have those bolts i have to buy them but i think the more pressing issue is the carb now i think this box is meant for a carb that has like the vacuum servo choke and as luck would have it actually a subscriber sent me his extra carb just the other day and i have it right here so it is essentially the same carb except the choke is different it's not a choke lever it's actually expecting this piece here to turn the choke on and off so i think this will work this also has the vacuum here to turn the choke off automatically which isn't going to work with this generator but that's okay we don't need that servo we just need this choke lever here so i'm going to take the box back off we'll try swapping the carb setups and then this should work so [Music] so you so this next part is going to be impossible to show you there's only enough room for me or the camera but not both anyway the red wire needs to go on the starter solenoid which is right here you can just see what's left of the old red wire that was cut off all right the red wire is done now i couldn't use actually the wires that i had bought for this these were a nice six gauge wire and i find the size a lot on generators but these terminals here are just too big for the starter solenoid and wouldn't have worked well on the battery so the remains of the wire that was on the starter solenoid was just a 10 gauge wire which seems a bit undersized but i double checked online and 10 gauge actually is fine for 12 volts 100 amps at about 2 feet which is what that is so that's what i went with on the red wire i'm just going to make up the black one now and then we'll attach the battery so [Applause] so this here is for just tying an extension cord together but i think it'll work to replace the battery strap with maybe one on each side something like that very quick trip to the store and we got the hardware we need to finish up the air box [Music] [Music] okay let's give this carb a try sounds good [Music] 127 volts 61.6 hertz 60.5 hertz 126.6 volts yeah not too bad you know for something that was destined to be crushed and melted down and it had no compression this thing's doing quite well you know that carb runs the engine fine it started right up and i was able to turn the choke off right away you know unloaded it was at 61.5 hertz and under 3000 watt load it only dropped a little bit to about 60 and a half which is really good and i did check the charging system the battery was charging i'd say the only thing left on this might be this meter here that's missing and the other one does have it so most likely i'll steal it from that but i'm going to hold off for now i want to work on that generator and see if it's viable or not but that'll be a separate video i'd say for now i'm done so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 436,704

Keywords: Airbox, Battery Cables, Battery, Carburetor, Champion Generator, Damaged Frame, Electric Start, Exhaust Valve, Fixed, Generator, Junkyark, Lapping, No Compression, Will It Run, Scrap, Small Engine, Stuck Valve, Trash, Troubleshooting, Valve Clearance, Valve Lapping

Id: yGhybUStTME

Length: 47min 29sec (2849 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021