On Sep 1, 10:59*pm, bobmct wrote:
Of course, *like many on the East Coast I lost power in the wee hours
of last Sunday morning and it was just restored late this afternoon.
(over 5 days). *But, I have my trusty Honda ES6500 generator.

This is a two cylinder, water cooled unit with a starting motor wiich
is powered by a standard U1 12 volt SLA battery.

My battery was dead (over 10 years old) so I used jumper cables to get
it started. *In an attempt to replace the battery I inadvertently
picked up a U1R battery. *When home I realized this was a reversed
pole battery like what I have in one of my cars. *So, all things being
equal, I rotated the batt 180 degrees and it mounted fine.

After hookup and turning on the key all the normal lights illuminated
and a further turn spun the starter motor and the unit started right
up. *Great!!! *However, within a few minutes the generator started
surging and making stange noises so I shut it down.

As nothing else had changed, I replaced the batt with the old one,
used the jumpers to start the gen and then it ran smoothly.

So, can someone please explain what might have happened? *Oh, and as
the gen was connected to my house circuits I literally burned up my
DVR box, my electronic clothes washer, a game cube power supply and my
computers' UPS and both my garage door openers..

As you pointed out, the only difference between a U1 and
U1R battery is that the location of the positive terminal
is reversed. Assuming you got it connected correctly,
I don't see how it could have anything to do with the
generator suddenly going nuts, unless possibly the
new battery is bad? Even then, I doubt it would
cause the generator to go nuts, as I'd think the battery
is only used for starting. Did you test the new battery
with a VOM and verify that it's at correct voltage?


I would never use a generator to power expensive, non-essential
gear. I had a generator running here and limited it to fridge,
freezer, lights and radio.






I'd be very interested to know why this happened. *And yes, the red
cable was connected to the + terminal and the black to the unmarked
terminal.

Thanks for any comments.

ps: *Ed P in Putnam - how did you fare in the storm?