Generator for 99 dollars

[Trollhole]

Well I picked it up today. I will say it's worth 100 dollars. 200 would be pushing it. But it does work very well. Starts easy. It's about as loud as your homes outside airconditioner. No I woudn't crank it up beside someone at a campsite all night but it would be great to power a few items in an emegancy or in places where there is no power. Seems very well built even comes with a tool kit and a 12v plug for charging a battery. One nice feature was it had a strainer in the gas tank. The 2 stoke smell is not as bad as I thought it would be. All in all I'm happy.

 

[alf]

And its almost a TEQ.

 

[ff347]

If Dale Gilbert says we might get ice, that thing will be worth $400.00! For $99.00 that is a great find.

Scott

 

[cruiseroutfit]

I've had a VERY similar one for a couple years now... other than the sticker it looks identical to yours (YAMADA brand ). I've seen similar ones under a half dozen different names so I'm guessing they are a typical China rebadge.

As for mine... it was actually a door prize of sorts when my dad bought some big diesel generators at a local generator shop, they gave him the small one to make the deal. He runs construction equipment so he had no use for the little guy... he gave it to me.

I'de have never bought one, but I tell you what you can't kill this little thing. I've used it for misc. stuff, and even made a mount for it to my trail trailer (though I've never used it camping). My pal Sully used it last winter numerous times to put up a light on a snowboard ramp up the canyon, always worked good for him too. One of the days coming down the canyon he had it in the back of his truck, took a turn and it fell out on the road. It broke on of the cast feet mount off the bottom, some of the plastic and dented the tank... but the damn thing still fires up in one or two pulls

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Oh yeah, check Ebay... there are a dozen different named models on there right now

 

[rusty_tlc]

My gut feel is that at 8.3 amps this thing makes wouldn't get a freezer motor started. It might carry it after is is running, but you need a pretty big surge current to start the compressor.

Typical houshold outlets supply 15 Amps. Think about what you plug into one outlet. This genset supplies a little over half that much current.


I wouldn't reley on this as a source of power during a blackout.


That said it would probably be fine to charge up the RV type trailer batteries during the day for use at night. I only run my Honda 4 stroke during the day to keep the noise down and be a good neighbor.

These things typicaly have a pretty low 12V current rating so you would probably need to use a 120V AC battery charger to keep run time down.

 

[firetruck41]

My gut feel is that at 8.3 amps this thing makes wouldn't get a freezer motor started. It might carry it after is is running, but you need a pretty big surge current to start the compressor.

Typical houshold outlets supply 15 Amps. Think about what you plug into one outlet. This genset supplies a little over half that much current.


I wouldn't reley on this as a source of power during a blackout.


That said it would probably be fine to charge up the RV type trailer batteries during the day for use at night. I only run my Honda 4 stroke during the day to keep the noise down and be a good neighbor.

These things typicaly have a pretty low 12V current rating so you would probably need to use a 120V AC battery charger to keep run time down.

My typical household circuits here at home are 20 amp, and run 3-5 outets or 3-4 light fixtures on one circuit. Not sure exactly what that says?

 

[rusty_tlc]

My typical household circuits here at home are 20 amp, and run 3-5 outets or 3-4 light fixtures on one circuit. Not sure exactly what that says?

I really wasen't clear, each outlet is rated for 15 amps. That dosen't mean there are 15 amps available at each outlet without overloading the circuit breaker.

My point is 8 Amps isn't going to go far during a black out. Beside that, last time I looked my house didn't have a cord that I could unplug from SPPC and into my genset. You need to know how you would switch from mains to backup power. So my real point is that anyone buying a $99 genset and thinking they are covered for a blackout if fooling themself.

 

[83bj60]

I saw this today and thought that was a hell of a deal for a generator. 69 decibels. Not bad. $99 dollars is a great deal.
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200313480_200313480

Yep, $150 in Canada at Walmart... PLUS 15% TAXES

I think I'll wait till I get south of the border for Christmas...

 

[83bj60]

My gut feel is that at 8.3 amps this thing makes wouldn't get a freezer motor started.

I'm not so sure about your asessment. The alternator is not small, there seems to be a fair amount of iron there. I wouldn't be surprised if it produced 20 or more peak amps.

OTOH, the motor is really puny.

Has anyone out there tested it already?

 

[ff347]

So my real point is that anyone buying a $99 genset and thinking they are covered for a blackout if fooling themself.

I would say that the majority of people on this forum know that fact, especially the author of the post. Your right though, a refrig/freezer combo generally takes 800 running watts and about 2400 start up.

You would be amazed at the people that come in to where I work part time (especially in an ice storm on the second day of no power) and want to spend about 400 dollars to buy a genset to run the whole house. Start up of electric motors is what sucks up the watts, we use a general figure of 3 times running wattage.

 

[97 FZJ80]

I'm not so sure about your asessment. The alternator is not small, there seems to be a fair amount of iron there. I wouldn't be surprised if it produced 20 or more peak amps.

OTOH, the motor is really puny.

Has anyone out there tested it already?

The spec says 1000watts continuous and 1200watts peak.

 

[Trollhole]

I plugged 2 500 watt shop lamps into it and it had no problem keeping them lit.

That being said don't think this thing will run everything.

 

[83bj60]

The spec says 1000watts continuous and 1200watts peak.

Let me rephrase... What would be the surge capacity? In other words, generators have a rating for starting purposes (let's say 1 or two seconds) during which they can produce a much larger current. Being that it is based on a fairly large iron core, I would be surprised it did not have a high surge capacity. OK, maybe only 1,2000W peak for a couple minutes, but I'm surprised it could not start something with an electric motor of roughly the same size/mass.

 

[Buckethead]

This would be pretty good for football -- just turn the TV up.

Nice

 

[roscoFJ73]

These things are flooding oz too and have all sorts of horror stories attached to them,mainly about keeping them running.
They are made in China and the metal in the cyl is crap.
Also we have 240 v in our homes but some of these are pumping out 260+

If you want something you can rely on,spend some money and get a Yamaha or Honda

 

[rusty_tlc]

doubtful it's very good stuff compared to a Honda IMO.
But, eh, it saves the day once on a blackout and it's already earned its keep...

I believe Pep boys sells a similar version for about the same price. Nice cheap insurance to keep the lights on during a blackout.

6db = 2^2 = 4X the sound of a Honda. I thought the noise level might be okay for emergencies like a blackout. I guess the neighbors wouldn't mind the noise since they don't have any power At a campsite at night, the noise level will be unbearable.

Since it's a two stroker, I don't think they sell it Cali and other emission controlled states.

I'm not so sure about your asessment. The alternator is not small, there seems to be a fair amount of iron there. I wouldn't be surprised if it produced 20 or more peak amps.

OTOH, the motor is really puny.

Has anyone out there tested it already?

..... So my real point is that anyone buying a $99 genset and thinking they are covered for a blackout if fooling themself.

I would say that the majority of people on this forum know that fact, especially the author of the post. Your right though, a refrig/freezer combo generally takes 800 running watts and about 2400 start up.

You would be amazed at the people that come in to where I work part time (especially in an ice storm on the second day of no power) and want to spend about 400 dollars to buy a genset to run the whole house. Start up of electric motors is what sucks up the watts, we use a general figure of 3 times running wattage.

I just got the impression from these comments that some of the readers were thinking this generator would work for that application. I really didn't mean to insult anyone.

So when these people come into your work, how do they think they are going to hook their house up to their brand new generator?

One of my neighbors was planning to use a suicide cord, a 25' 12 AWG extension cord with two male ends.

People do some scary s***.

 

[ff347]

"So when these people come into your work, how do they think they are going to hook their house up to their brand new generator?"



Ah, that is the problem. They are pissed at the price of a generator and the whole no return policy. Generally, I have learned to let them read the two pages of "How to size a generator" and that helps explain a good bit.

No offense taken Hell, I am impressed your neighbor figured out the two male ends and selected 12 gauge.

 

[Trollhole]

I use a suicide cord but But I do know what I'm doing. Next year I think I'll buy a bigger gen. and a switch box.

 

[rusty_tlc]

I use a suicide cord but But I do know what I'm doing. Next year I think I'll buy a bigger gen. and a switch box.

We use to have an self contained RV so I never worried, in an outage we could just camp out in the driveway. Since we sold that I'm thinking of getting a generator. All I would want is something big enough to carry the forced air heat and run the freezer a couple of hours a day. We can use flashlights and have gas for cooking. If its winter we will have heat and put the food in coolers outside. If it's summer we will run the fridge and skip the heat. For as seldom as we have power outages that last more than a few hours it's not worth investing in a unit that will run the whole house.