What's the Deal With Harbor Freight Generators?

locum tenens how do you help guys against this red your friendly neighborhood told me are back again here in the old dented tools and today we're here to talk about generators we're going to give you the the up-down ins and outs on Harbor Freight generators which one you need which one you would want not one why they're different what's the difference between all the different miles just straighten all the craziness out I get a lot of questions about these all the time now why are we talking about this right now well I I think the obvious the answer is fairly obvious does too wide this is a big discussion point right now you know there's a lot of craziness going on in the world there's a lot of uncertainty and as a very wise bear once said it's smart to expect to the best but prepare for the worst you know it's always great we always hope that the Sun shines but you got to be ready for when it rains you know the very very wise bear said that anyway Harbor Freight is nice enough to get us this little fact sheet here let me pop out of your way real quick and this was this one tells us then it gives us an idea about recreational home backup job site what you're gonna do and basically the three steps here are the really important ones select the power devices you want to power not just one all of them if you're only powering one device that's great if you're powering a whole bunch you need to you need to figure out all of them choose the device that has the highest watts of starting power so like when it kicks on like if you're trying to run an AC that's gonna have the highest kick on kind of power there that's where you see two numbers on these generators they have the initial starting power that they need to overcome and because this kind of like pushing a boulder you have to get it moving first once you get it moving there's some inertia to it and then you need to add up the running watts of all of the devices if you have everything everything you want to have running at once all right so those could be two entirely different numbers and often are entirely different numbers all right and the two types of generators we're going to talk about here are your basic standard generator versus what's called an inverter generator and the difference is a standard generator hasn't an engine of some kind that runs on a fuel converted or connected to an alternator produce electricity and then that goes into an electrical panel for you to plug into an inverter generator does some wacky stuff it takes that AC power off of the alternator runs it through a rectifier it converts it to DC and then back through an inverter into AC and that gives you a better pure wave length like a sine wave kind of thing that allows you to run better power off of it it also gets other electronics involved so that you can run instead of having to run it full steam like a steamer generator has to run at full power all the time this generator is usually a smarter generator and it can run it can power itself down it can run it at a lower power often than motors used in them are more fuel-efficient they usually end up costing more but based on fuel usage they end up usually almost almost always saving you money and they're definitely quieter to use now what are the key ways to tell whether you're dealing with an inverter versus a standard generator is usually the inverters look like this they're usually a smaller more portable something you can grab with your hands there's some bigger ones but like the big generators you'll always see they're like I got a caged random they've got metal that's a rule of thumb that's not always a rule so Harbor Freight got to inverter generators they've got the predator 2000 watt super quite generator here $500 before any coupons or anything like that and now this is a 2000 starting watt and you always see this on these generators they always use the starting wattage first because of course it's the biggest number and they want to use that now as far is it's running numbers it's 1600 watt running numbers so that means the most it can handle from one peak is 2,000 but under standard running load is going to be 2,000 this is a pretty nifty little generator okay it can run quite a bit of stuff as you've got several you know choices as far as outputs they're up front it's got a pull start on the side they're nice basic little generators now they this one has a big brother the 3500 watt generator which i think is a three thousand just double checking a 3000 watt generator with standard running power and as you can see here it's got more even more options here you got AC 120 there you got the you standard 110 or 120 s plugs this is for connecting to a larger unit for effect you don't work I'm gonna say that we're gonna get into that in just a minute but before we give in that I'm gonna talk about real quick about usage on these often I see these used on campgrounds with camp trailers and stuff like that because they are quieter and they're not that stupid loud one most parks aren't gonna let you run a generator and if they do they want you running an inverter generator because it's gonna be quiet it's not going to annoy the snot out of everybody the smaller one here the 2000 watt has a 12-hour run time runs at 65 decibels it runs off of a seventy nine point seven CC predator motor and it's it you know it's getting a lot of nice little features to it it's a great basic generator the 3500 on the other hand will run for 11 hours and runs at 57 decibels it's even quieter than the generator it's running off of a 212 predator motor it's got we talked about 3500 starting whilst 3000 running running Watts digital LCD screen low oil notification overload protection with output light indicators it's got two 120v AC Greta and let's one 120v AC twistlock outlet again that's for outputting to another larger unit we're gonna talk about that more in a little bit and these are what you're gonna want again if you're if nose is an issue these are the two generators that you're gonna want now getting into the the big standard generator so we're gonna start from the top and work our way down we've got the predator 9000 so this is the big boy the Harbor Freight sells sells for 680 and with coupon right now it's $600 this is a large generator alright you've got a ton of output on here the wheel kit and stuff if I'm not mistaken all of these is gonna be extra so you're gonna have to buy the wheel kits and they come with the wheels and the handle separately you just get the cage and once inside it as it worked now let me show these outputs here so you can see we've got the 120 over here with 30 amp okay that's import the 30 amps there what we're gonna need well for what we're talking and basically what I'm alluding to is houses and campers all right most campers run off of a 30 amp or 50 amp circuit so that's why that's important then you have the rest your controls here let's go down to the specs real quick run time is third 13 hours it's got electric start which is nice low oil indicator low oil shutdown so you have to worry about damaging it runs off of a 420 CC predator motor it has the nice steel cage there and of course the outlets that we're talking about a little Wells a GFCI outlet so this thing's got 9,000 sturdy wants 7250 running wattage again that means the most you can hook up to it is 72 50 so you're gonna want to add up every little thing you've got and figure out what it's running power it is and that's how you determine if this is if you're gonna be able to run at all alright the next item is oh look it's the same thing now why is this different bear why are you showing it to me twice well on the first one if you know it's down up here it has the name of a PA 3 and this one's ever seen EPA theory says carb what is carb carb stands for the communist part I mean sorry the California air and resource board I think is what it stands for basically it's a California emission standards California's got a lot of smog and stuff they have to deal with and they've got more vehicles and more Angela there a lot pickier when it comes to this sort of stuff so anybody who makes something with a motor if they want to sell it in California has to meet you meet carb compliance so you can see a lot of these as an EPA 3 compliant and as a carbon compliant alright the next step down is the predator 8750 this is the EPA 3 version we're looking at it runs for five or six hundred dollars $50 off went with a coupon and you're gonna get I get nine hours on this one electric start again running off the 420 cc motor with the roll cage you get for 120 duplex outlets with three prongs the one one of the 120 twist locks one three prong 120 / 240 volt block and one 12-volt DC output so this is pretty nifty here let's take see if I can get a closer look at a panel I don't think it's gonna give me anything to close there so that gives you an eye you got the DC and by DC this is your standard like cigarette lighter plug in which is nice because especially if you're off campus or something like that quite often you're gonna have some you know automotive based appliances maybe you want to take with you I've got a cooler that was sent to me for testing that runs off of DC power like this so if I was at a campsite and I had some like this going I wouldn't need a special adapter I could plug it right in and keep cooling everything so that's pretty nice alright now next is of course the carb version of this they all seem to be the same price and then we just step down to the predator 6500 what now this one sells for five hundred dollars and it's gonna have 6,500 sturdy watts but 5500 running watts it's gonna run for 14 hours 14 1/2 hours and it's got the loyal low oil indicator and low oil shutdown which again is something you're really gonna want but I don't believe that this one has the electric start let me just double check here yeah this one's listed as recoil start which I believe is the same as pull start correct me if I'm wrong maybe the bear is wrong about that one but I don't see anything about electric start on this little sucker so there you go anyway that's the 6500 now again we have that in the carb as well stepping down we've got the clearance version of the 6500 now what happens often with Harbor Freight is they have they've ones being made by multiple different facilities and sometimes they will clear out one like they're not gonna use that that company anymore and they'll be clearing that out so you keep an eye on that also these are really good to pick up from parking lot sales or getting the the factory refurbished models if you do go that route always always always opt for the extended warranty ok now then we have the predator 4375 I always thought this was a bit of an oddball one in here but it's a 3,500 running amperage or running wattage versus the the peak starting wattage here and again let's take a look at the panel there and we can see we've got one of the 120 outs we've got two of the 120 duplex we've got the DC as well we got a dick the the breakers built into the front panel like we have on all of them the low oil alert let's see if it has the low oil shutoff I think it does it does the low oil shutdown as well this is running off of the 212 as well so you get the Ford 120 GFCI outlets three pronged one of the 120 twist locks 1/2 40 sorry and for progress on that and you get the 12 volt DC as well and again this is a recoil start as well and of course we have the carb version of it cuz California has to have their say alright here we have one of the more bargain level ones that's probably one of the best you know bang for the buck kind of stuff it's not the quietest one out there I'm gonna say that right now and that's the predator 4000 I think it's a 3000 or 3200 watt let me get rolled down here in check 3200 continuous wap 4000 start it'll output output 120 240 v AC it's got a 12 volt on it as well it's got the two you know senior will for I guess total of the 120s its pull start as well and it's get the low oil indicator and low oil shutdown which is great and again coupon price on this is $300 now again as I said this is not gonna be the quietest one out there but it's gonna get you probably the most bang for the buck in it next up we got this in carb alright this one I get asked about this one all time the tailgater okay now this is a 5000 starting wattage okay I'm joking I'm joking no matter what max voltage okay and the peak voltage on it is 700 this thing is tiny it's noisy as all heck runs for five hours rubs off a sixty three little tiny two cycle engine all right it's got one 120 volt grounded a receptacle you're gonna run one thing off of this all right so you got to pick what that one thing is and you're not gonna run anything else and this shutup moto it is gonna be noisy it's gonna be loud I hate these things I hate them with a passion but 400 bucks if you just need something just something I guess it's better than a sharp stick in the eye you know it's got some decent reviews here I've heard good things I've heard bad things about it I think mostly the bad things are people wanting to do more with it than what it is if you realize hey this is a hundred dollar generator it's a hundred dollar generator okay yeah you know you're gonna get out of it what what it has and that's about it all right moving on they have this now I'm including this because it's a little bit kind of quirk here this is a DIY generator all right this is the power head unit that you can make your own generator all right it's got a drive shaft on the back however you decide to drive this if you're driving it with gas wind belt driven pedal driven whatever gonna do and then you've got an electrical front panel where you've got a four prong to two prongs you got your breakers you have four some meters there you can build your own one thousand sorry ten thousand max starting 7,200 running you could build one heck of a generator off of this for three hundred and twenty nine dollars so this is if you're gonna be hardcore off-the-grid you've got your own source of power but you need to convert it to something else this this is the puppy that it'll do it now if you're out on the farm there's something a little bit different I just want to touch on base that they have this this is a PTO generator okay so you can connect it to a PTO Drive and take power and can convert that PTO Drive into electrical power this is a pretty nifty kind of concept alright so if you don't know what a PTO drive is PDL sounds I believe stands for power take-off old army trucks tractors jeeps and stuff I used to have these fairly common it was basically another way to connect directly to the drivetrain of the motor so you could drive your truck right up to this connect your truck via this this drive linkage and it would turn an alternator down here and you get power off of it $1,500 you are gonna need to probably bolt this to the ground maybe put a cement pad down on and bolt that to that because there's a lot of physical kinetic force here going along with this PTO Drive and you don't want this thing swinging around on ya alright now we talked about all this stuff now how do you use this what you're asking the Bears like great you know zombies show up the rona zombies what do we do well there's three ways to connect this to your house okay we're talking about connected to your house and then we're going to talk about connecting it to your RV if you're connected to your house the first way is to have an electrician come out and I'm talking these are legal ways to do this or at least legal generally legal you're gonna have to consult local ordinances and stuff you know and and check with the local laws on this but first way is to have a transfer switch and panel alright and what you have here is basically is this is your main panel over here and then you have this transfer switch here in the middle and then you have a secondary panel and the secondary panel is gonna run to all the stuff that's like essential that needs to be run and when you come over here with the switch when you throw that switch it's gonna cut off all power that could go back out through the mains to the power lines to power company and stuff and it's gonna cut you off from the grid and it's gonna just connect then any power coming from the outside and my outside I mean your generator you're gonna have a plug where you literally plug your house into this box so it plugs in goes through the transfer or switch and panel and then basically everything off of that panel runs and that's how you handle it it's a very it's really the best way I think to possibly do this it's the cleanest it gives you the most control and it's the safest way to do it now it's gonna be a little bit pricey the panel itself is gonna run between let's say three to five hundred dollars or five hundred to a thousand dollars depending on how how many wattage the pammi wants the power or panel is and how how much your electrician charges to install it basically what I found is it's gonna be about double if you get a 300 dollar panel it's gonna cost you about three hundred dollars to get it installed if you get a 500 watt pain Lutz gonna cost you about five hundred watts to get it installed that's just kind of a rule of thumb maybe you've got a buddy he'll give you a hookup or something that's great the other way to do it is with one of these meter mounted transfer switches it's essentially that same transfer switch in a little column that goes in behind your meter again you have to have an electrician come out and install it it costs a little bit more because there's a lot of lectrons built into this little sucker here but it it's easier for them to install I mean it's like a five-minute job they just have to unbolt this both this snap it back in clamp it all back down and then test it to make sure everything works and you're good to go so it's gonna cost a little bit more up front but you're gonna save a lot on the installation and the the problem with this though is then you have to go to your your your panel and turn off any of the circuits that can't be supported or shouldn't be supported like maybe your water heater or something like that because it's all gonna be dependent on the size of the generator you have and even with a big generator if you have a decent sized house it's not gonna be able to run everything so you're gonna have to pick and choose what's gonna get run kids room probably getting turned off there hey it'll deserve it anyway but this is an exploded diagram showing you exactly how this work it literally just goes between the mocks and the meter and it has a plug on the bottom rather than a plug on the house it's a it's a nice simple easy way to do it it doesn't there's no more panels and stuff in your house not again not as elegant but a little bit cheaper in the long run than going with the full switch and panel okay and then the third way that we do this is gonna be a bit more technical alright is it it's it's gonna cost less but it's got to take some skill here and what you're going to do is you're gonna run extend courts from the stuff you want to run through the house and out the sliding glass door or out of window okay got to be very careful when you're doing this so you don't get your thumb caught in there all right and you're just gonna plug them straight into the generator this is cheap it is legal to do you're gonna be very limited by what you can plug in and there's practically no way you're going to be able to safely plug in enough stuff to really tap into the full power of the generator you just start there just there's just not no way that those extension cords can handle that much wattage because when you run a little bit hot you and don't even try okay don't try you just don't plug in like one extension cord and then plug in a power strip and then plug in like five power strips into that power strip that's how fires start we don't want any of that okay so this is the cheap easy version this is the middle-of-the-road version and this is the I'm serious about staying off the grid when I need to be off the grid version okay now campers so when you're camping your RV or your trailer there's usually a 50 amp a 30 amp and sometimes a 15 amp basically like your typical house current you'll see that unlike pop-ups and stuff some of the less expensive stuff alright the trailer we had or the RV we had a Class A it was I think was ten years old and he had a 30 amp circuit the bigger ones are gonna have 50 amp circuits well how do you power one of those if you've got like say you've got a couple of these inverter generators you know maybe this one this one how do you can how do you get that much power out of them well here's the deal you can connect multiple inverter generators together because they're crafty enough they let you do that and you use a device like this hold on this device lets you connect in parallel to inverter generators okay and it literally they see these these the blue red and the green yellow cord down there there are outputs on the front of these generators to plug two of these into this box and then what you have is you have an put on the left which is our V ready it's a 30 amp RV outlet right there for 125 just you could plug your RV directly into this or your camper or whatever and then the other side you've got your typical 120 volt 30 amp twistlock output as well so and this is a weatherproof housing you know if you're looking for a real way to hook up your RVs also have a backup for your house all sorts of stuff this is the way to go if you're gonna use the inverter generators and I got to tell you you know it's $70 for this plus to Jenner's it's not the cheapest way to go but it will get the job done well anyway there you go there you have it that's the ins and outs of the Harbor Freight generators I hope I answered all your questions if not be sure to post them down below if there's another category here at Harbor Freight you want me to cover next let me know what it is because I know there's I get a lot of questions about all these different areas and people are confused about well what does this mean and what does that mean and why do they need this and why didn't they name it that what's the difference between these two I've so I've decided you know because of the shutdown stuff what a great time to go through and kind of give an explanation to everything that's going on over there so everyone can tell this is what these different brands mean and this is what these different options are and why you might want them anyway hope the bear helped you out anyway you all take care stay safe god bless and as always shine on you

Channel: The Den of Tools

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Keywords: Tool reviews, best tool, top 5 tools, top 10 tools, harbor freight, milwaukee, dewalt, ryobi, kobalt, black & decker, hercules, ridgid, porter cable, craftsman, bauer, chicago electric, admiral, hatichi, makita, doyle, quinn, pittsburg pro, What's the Deal With Harbor Freight Generators? (Inverter vs Standard vs PTO vs DIY), inverter generator, gas generator, pto, silent generator, honda generator

Id: eJtFDXXuO2Q

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2020