I think Onan is (was?) the king of good gensets. Their 1800 rpm versions
really nice. But EXPENSIVE parts.

If you buy a regular genset with engine, keep in mind that almost all of
them have only one bearing on the generator section. they use a tapered
shaft coupling to hook it to the engine, use the engine output bearing
to support one end of the rotor. This means that swapping out a bad
engine is not anywhere as easy as you might expect. You need the
specific crankshaft that came with the original setup. If you trash an
engine badly, you have to buy the new engine AND a new crankshaft with
the correct taper (almost impossible to get the new engine with the
correct taper)

The generator itself is pretty reliable. If the windings are big enough
to handle the loads, there isn't much else. The bearings of course, a
couple of diodes, brushes if they are there, that's it.

Karl mentioned the PTO setup. A great way to go.

Jon Anderson wrote:
For my eventual move to Oz, I will be building my own motor/generator to
power those tools that cannot be converted to 3phase. Don't plan to run
many items at once, I'm thinking about maybe a 4kw generator.

What's a good reliable generator at the output end? Going to try to find
one with a bad engine, but want to make sure the other half will last a
while given the expense of having a replacement shipped over....
And yeah, I'm planning on taking spare parts for it.


Jon