If your generator stops producing power…

Had a funny one in the shop today that I had to share. Classic “there’s your problem lady” moment.

So tailgating season is coming up and this guy brings in his generator that, of course, hasn’t been run since the last HS football game last year.

But here’s the interesting twist. It’s not an engine problem, the thing starts and runs fine. It just doesn’t produce any power.

So of course I tried the electric drill trick that’s all over the internet. And yes that does actually work and has worked for me in the past. There are a lot of videos on this out on the internet so I won’t go into details here but if you ever have the problem of a generator not producing power try the drill trick first.

But that didn’t work this time. So there I was sweating to the oldies out in the garage trying to pull this thing apart and figure out what was the real problem.

Generators are not my favorite be there are a lot of things that can cause no power and these little portable units are not easily to disassemble. I finally got down to the capacitor. Check out the pictures. I think I see the problem here. I’m not sure what that goo is coming out of the capacitor and I’m not sure I even want to know. The point is I don’t think that gunk should be there.

Hopefully the next tailgating generator is that easy.

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Don’t touch it Grouse!! It may be a juvenile BLOB!!

Netguy wrote:

Don’t touch it Grouse!! It may be a juvenile BLOB!!

Ha ha. Too late.

The ironic thing is here I am sitting with no power in my whole house due to the storms last night and I have a generator in the garage. Unfortunately as you would predict I’m waiting for parts… Story of my life, really.

Ok now I have to google the drill thing. What the heck is that stuff?

John Rasmussen wrote:

Ok now I have to google the drill thing. What the heck is that stuff?

If the generator will run but won’t produce power, it may have lost its residual charge. A lot of generators have this problem. Especially after a long periods of storage.

This residual charge can be restored by plugging in an electric drill or a angle grinder and then spinning this device backward to produce a polarized current.

This is a great procedure for everybody who owns a generator to be aware of. You never know…

Obviously there is an extended service procedure where you can do the same thing. But the drill or angle grinder methods are way faster. And they don’t require any disassembly.

Personally I Chuck a screwdriver bit into the cord drill and then I use a cordless drill on the other end of the bit to spin the corded drill backwards. You have to be really ready to pull the plug once the thing takes off but this works.

Here’s a video explaining how to do it.

This is why I come to this site. Thanks Grouse. Never knew that and probably saved my bacon (literally 40 lbs in the freezer) some day

Steve is great!! Watched one of his chain saw videos before.

FinickyFish wrote:

This is why I come to this site. Thanks Grouse. Never knew that and probably saved my bacon (literally 40 lbs in the freezer) some day

The biggest thing is that you have to still have a CORDED drill. Those are becoming an endangered species in most workshops.

Okay that is a cool little hack. Will keep that in mind

A lot of bigger capacitors have that stuff inside. The old “Electrolytic” capacitors would sometimes blow up when they got old. Sounded like a 12 gauge going off, and it would shoot pieces of capacitor all over the place. I’m kind of surprised to see this kind of component failure on a newer machine.

SR

The biggest thing is that you have to still have a CORDED drill. Those are becoming an endangered species in most workshops.

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Glad you mentioned that (though it should have been obvious ). That is an extinct species in my garage but I know my neighbor has one.

What’s a corded drill?
Picture or it doesn’t exist.

MX1825 wrote:

What’s a corded drill?
Picture or it doesn’t exist.

Its like a rotary phone

I’m pretty sure I still have one and the cord going into the drill is in a lot better shape than Steve’s in the video.
Now I just need to buy a generator and have it stop producing power.

MX1825 wrote:

What’s a corded drill?
Picture or it doesn’t exist.

Similar to the mythical green sunfish. Everybody knows somebody who has seen one..

But seriously, I would guess that’s why some guys had to start using an angle grinder. It was the only corded tool they had left.

I had to do that hack a couple years ago on my generator, it’s essentially the only reason I keep the corded drill around.

That’s a cool hack, I knew there was a reason I kept that old corded black & decker around for 6 moves and 20 years…

Update on the generator referenced in the original post. As it turned out all it took was a new capacitor. That’s the part I have pictured in the original post. Minus the gunk oozing out of it.

The part was $25. Plus the customer wanted an oil change, new air filter etc. luckily this customer was not without power this past week. But he does have a football game coming up so the generator returns to tailgating duty.

I now return you to my regularly scheduled program of gummed up chainsaw carburetors.

Guys, please don’t leave mixed gas in the tank of your chainsaw when it’s going to be stored for a prolonged period of time. If you’re storing your saw for anything longer than a month without use, just dump the gas out and then start it and run it dry.