VoltMaster Generator - No Compression

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home a 4000 watt voltmaster generator it is powered by an eight horse flathead briggs and stratton engine and this one is about 34 years old you know it didn't cost much it was only 30 dollars and that's because well it's old but it also has no compression so you know i've already looked it over i think i have a fair idea on what's going on so let me show you so i can hear the compression which tells me the piston is going up and down so the issue is not a broken connecting rod most likely a valve is hung up and probably the easiest way to figure out which one is to put your hand either over the exhaust or over the intake and see which one is enclosing the intake should only be sucking air in not blowing it out and the exhaust should only be blowing air out and not sucking it in so let's check the exhaust yeah and that's conclusive it's blowing air out the exhaust and then sucking it right back in so that exhaust valve is stuck open the best way to fix it really is to pull the head off get the valve out but in order to get the head off you need to get everything else around it off so we got to pull the carb the blower housing the fuel tank and then finally we can get to that head i think before i do anything though i want to get this contraption off the bottom and just level this out on a furniture dolly but that kind of brings up another oddity on this generator this does have electric start the wires have been cut and you can see right there there is a battery tray but that is made by this wood thing that's under here so i'm not sure where the original location would have been for the battery potentially that was just an add-on that someone did at some point but i guess my point is i mean this generator it's quite old and adding a battery and a battery tray is going to be at least 30 or 40 dollars we already know we're going to need at least a new head gasket potentially some other gaskets so you know this project very quickly could exceed the value of this generator not including labor so i think everything i do is going to have that in mind you know most likely i am not going to put a battery on this and or a wheel kit but yeah that's getting ahead of myself i don't even know if this engine is going to run or the power head make power so let's get this thing off the bottom we'll get it leveled out and then start in on that engine [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so i think it's a good idea to just check for spark before i pull this recoil off you know i know i have to order a head gasket already potentially this has a points system and may need some parts so let's find out beautiful you i okay well not exactly what i was expecting to see but the same result you know both valves open and close right now the intake's open i'm going to rotate the engine and now the exhaust is open if i keep going when the intake opens the exhaust should be closed and it looks like it is but we know better and you can kind of see a little gap right there so if i try to rotate the valve with my fingers here you can see i can rotate it so that valve's not closed most likely it's just a valve adjustment that's needed but since we're here we'll lap both valves we'll adjust both valves and then put it back together you all right now that the springs are disconnected you can see how that exhaust valve is just not making any contact the intake does not do that so we need to start by just taking a little bit off of here so we can get some clearance we'll lap this valve in and then lap this one i checked online and if i looked up the right thing the exhaust valve clearance should actually be between nine and eleven thousand so we do have a bit to take off uh for this i'm just gonna use uh this bench grinder you know i'm going to hold it as straight as i can kind of rotate the valve and check frequently it's very easy to take off too much [Music] yeah i'm always shocked how quickly that comes off so right now we're at 11 000 maybe closer to 12. so i may have overshot a bit anyway lapping the valves should take care of that [Music] you beautiful it's a nice tight fit it doesn't spin so that valve is done i'll just double check that clearance yeah perfect it's now eleven thousands so i think we're good with this valve [Music] yeah that that feels good so yeah i probably should have cleaned the valves before doing this the exhaust valve surprisingly doesn't look bad it's not all carboned up but the intake is a different story you can see there's a decent amount right here so i'm going to put this in the drill we'll just spin it hold some scotch brite here and might lap the valve again because just holding the scotch brite there might change this a bit and i want to make sure we have a good seal but the exhaust valve actually i don't think needs to be cleaned i'll clean it anyway but it's pretty clean all right that's pretty much it the valves cleaned up real well i lapped them in again real quick and double checked the clearance we are at ten thousands on the exhaust and six on the intake so i'm just going to take a minute kind of decarbon the top of the piston here as well as you know this area and do the same on the other side of the head so okay unfortunately this head is a little bit too big to fit in my vise so it's gonna fight me a bit but we'll get it clean [Music] that took a while but the ceiling surface is cleaned and a majority of that carbon has been removed so theoretically we're ready to reassemble but i do need a new head gasket valve cover gasket and a gasket for the carburetor so get those ordered up and we'll continue on in a minute the head gasket's on its way it's actually going to be here tomorrow so in preparation of that i do want to get the valves reinstalled and the intake one should be pretty easy it just uses a retainer with this little i don't know what you call it but basically it just slides over into this notch and that holds the valve in place the exhaust valve not quite that simple it does use keepers so i actually drained the oil you know i was thinking i might stand the engine up or tip it over in a funny way to get those keepers in there but now that the oil's out i'm thinking maybe i'll just try it like this so i did put some paper towels in here this is the oil return to the engine so if you drop the keeper it will disappear into the engine anyway let's try to get this one installed and see how it goes my fingers are way too big yeah that wasn't working too well so we'll try it up on its side like this as luck would have it i had already an extra gasket for this valve cover as well as one for the carburetor so the only thing i had to order here was the head gasket this just showed up so i'm going to degrease the mating surfaces and we'll bolt everything down a so now that we got the head torqued it down i'm going to turn the engine over with a drill i want to see what the psi is normally i would see 60 psi on a generator with a compression release this one i assume has one but honestly i don't know so let's rotate it over and anything around 60 or better i'd be pretty happy with beautiful right at 60 so this absolutely should run so i'm going to get the carburetor on we'll get the blower housing on we'll give it a try just going to take a second i want to degrease this engine before i put everything back on so gonna roll the dice with this carb it looks pretty clean and given the condition of this generator i mean someone definitely took care of it so i am willing to bet that this carb works uh if not we can always take it off and clean it later this generator also came with a whole new well not new but it came with an extra carburetor and basically the whole intake and air box i don't think we're going to need it but at least we have parts if it comes to that you i'm pretty much ready to give this thing a try the fuel is hooked up and turned on don't see the carb overflowing so we're off to a good start i'm going to leave everything electrical unplugged for now this rotor does not have permanent magnets and it could have residual magnetism issues so i want to give it the best chance possible to power up then we'll plug in the kilowatt see where we're at and most likely make some speed adjustments and some jetting adjustments then i'll load it up to 3000 watts and see how it does foreign so all right well this one surprised me i had a little trouble starting it but that's because i had the choke backwards i actually got it started with the choke off i then tried turning it on and of course it didn't like that so once i figured it out things started running better the engine speed was a little high i think it was around 63 maybe a little bit over 63 hertz so i bumped that down to 61 and a half adjusted the jets and then loaded it to 3000 watts and it did just fine the voltage two i was a little worried about it it was 107 volts without a load and once i put that 3000 watt load on the voltage came right up to 120 volts and we were pretty close to 60 hertz so this thing is doing really well anyway i double checked the charging system and it does seem to be putting out power it was about 24 volts dc which is high but without a battery attached i think that's expected so given how this runs i might add a battery back to it and potentially some wheels anyway let's get this inside and figure out where to go next i think i can reuse the wheels that came with this generator for the wheel kit the axle unfortunately that came with it it's not quite wide enough to extend beyond the edges of the frame so i did pick up a new axle it's the same diameter half inch and we'll just cut that to size as far as the handles go on the feet i'm just going to use these here this is actually part of a dog bed that had ripped so this was destined to be recycled but it'll make a nice handle and foot you know unfortunately there is a hurricane potentially that could hit this area in about 24 hours so instead of putting the wheel kit on i think the priorities have shifted a bit i'm going to get the fuel tank back on as well as new fuel line most likely remove those wires hanging out on the side and at least get this in a kind of a state where it can be used if it needs to be called an action and potentially it could be the end of the video if someone ends up buying this but let's um get it service worthy and then we'll figure out if we can continue with uh the enhancements you not so sure i like the routing of this fuel line you know i ran it the same way that it was but you know i'm worried that this is a bit sharp potentially that could cause an issue with the line uh the last eight horse briggs i worked on the line actually went on the outside here so i'm going to reroute this before pulling these wires off i'm going to try the electric start real quick see if it even works [Applause] and it does all right guys that might be it for this generator i'm not sure i guess we'll see how the storm goes so either this is the ending or maybe not but just in case i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching one last look this is the calm before the storm anyway someone's on the way to pick this up they'll be here in about 10 minutes the best part is it's all good

Channel: James Condon

Views: 100,468

Keywords: 190417, 190417-3024-01, 190417-3024, 270430, 272163S, 8 Horse Power, 8 Horse, 8hp, Briggs and Stratton, Briggs, Brushless, Carburetor Adjustment, Compression Test, Fixed, Flathead, G04400V2E, Generator, Head Gasket, Hurrican Henri, Keepers, LHead, Lap, Lapping, Load Test, Low Boltage, No Compression, Small Engine, Spark Test, Troubleshooting, Valve Adjustment, Valve Removal, Valves, Volt Master, Voltmaster

Id: qBFZUfB0tr4

Length: 43min 33sec (2613 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021