I picked up a small 2000w Honda generator 30% off at a Gander closing sale. One of those small red ones that you can’t hardly hear running. The manual doesn’t say anything about synthetic oil. It just says use 10w30 in the summer, 5w30 below 40° and change it after the first 20 hrs.
I’m tempted to run regular 10w30 for first 20 hrs then switch to synthetic 10w30.
Thoughts?
Mobil ONE
I personally wouldn’t bother with conventional oil and break in. Fill ‘er up with Mobile 1 10-30 and let ‘er rip.
The “worst” that can happen is the generator would use oil because the rings and valves aren’t “worn in”. In that case you could always drain and switch to conventional, but today’s conventional oils are so good that I doubt the would allow enough wear to solve the problem much fast than it would have been solved had you just continued to run with Mobile 1.
I’ve run all kinds of small engines on Mobile one and I currently have a 25 year old snowblower, a 20 year old lawn tractor, and a 20 year old self-propelled mower, none of which burn a drop of oil between changes. All run on 10-30 Mob 1.
You’ll love that generator.
Grouse
X3 on Mobil One…Congrats on a great generator, you will love it
So, you bought that gen for what… $700.00? Nice buy!
Regular 10w30 works fine…
$700.00?
Yeah, we searched the barcodes on a smartphone and $999.99 looked like the min ad price because everyone had them at that price. I decided to snag it while the snaggin was good. I didn’t want to wait and possibly miss out altogether. It might of gone down another 10% in a couple of weeks but that’d be all before they were all snagged up. They only have 1 left a camo model. It’s the same thing as mine except it has a $300 paint job.
Tonight I filled it up with Mobile 1 10W30, and it started on the 4th pull. Plugged a box fan into it to give it a little load and ran it for an hour. It seemed to get quieter the longer it ran.
It’s going to be a real sweetheart for a long time. I’ve already picked up a Honda camo cover and a cord that plugs into a DC outlet for charging 12V batteries.
Holy, that’s a fantastic deal… They’re never (rarely) on sale. Enjoy your gen, they’re awesome!
You may want to consider an Hour meter option for tracking maintenance. I keep a log on the inside of the side panel so I know what I did when. Its nice to see how few or many hours you put on. In two years I have only logged 160hrs.
Very easy to install, all you have to do is wrap an induction wire around the spark plug wire a few wraps then drill a 1/8″ hole in the cover, attach wire to the meter and 2 sheetmetal screws hold the meter to the case.
Hour Meter
Thanks for the hour meter hour idea and mount suggestion.
Mike
X4 on the Mobil One, and on the hour meter. Bought mine from Beisswengers and was told to change the oil after the first 20 hours of running, and then after each 100 hours, like the manual says. Been running problem free for three years.
The Honda generators will run on just about anything you put in it, they’re bulletproof. I use synthetic 5w30 and it works great.
Can’t go wrong with a Honda 2000 watt generator. Bought mine also at Beisswengers in the old store way back in 2003. Only used it for my tent trailer. Works great all these year. Loaned it to my sone one year and he left the gas in it for over a year. Had to do a carb job to get the green gunk out. Runs great again. My problem now is we bought a 25 ft travel trailer with AC. The 2000 won’t run that. So we bought another Beisswengers Honda. This time much larger. A EM4000SX watt gen. Can’t find anything on the break in period for this. Got a message sent to Honda for help. Anyone have any ideas on this?
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