On Friday, September 6, 2013 5:46:31 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Fri, 06 Sep 2013 18:44:01 +0000, TOM

wrote:



It will only run for about 8sec's then stops. It does it 4 or 5 times then

shuts down.

Check the low oil shutdown switch (and the oil level)



Could be something simple like that. Or it could be more
serious. I went through diagnosing one last year that also
started up, ran for some number of seconds, maybe 10 - 15 secs
or so, then shut off. As I recall, a few things happen
around that time. One is that upon starting, the ignition
voltage is supplied by the battery, but then after starting,
it switches to being supplied by one generator winding that
serves that purpose. If that winding or associated circuit
is bad, it loses ignition. Also, as I recall, the generator
control looks for normal voltage after start-up. If it doesn't
see it, then it will shut it down.

In the generator I had, it was a bad rotor for sure, and
possibly a bad stator too. I took a look at all the complaints
on Amazon about similar Generacs and concluded it wasn't worth
fixing. That had also been the conclusion of the service guy
who diagnosed it for the neighbor I got it from. Being that it
was only about 5 years old, I thought I might get lucky and be
able to fix it, but it didn't pan out.

I found the Generac service manual online which had good detail
on the various test procedures.