On Friday, September 6, 2013 6:22:19 PM UTC-4, wrote:
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.



Also, the unit here had a couple of fuses that were accessible
right at the control panel. Checking them is quick and easy.
As another simple test, if you're comfortable working with AC,
put a test meter on the generator output. If you have 240V
during the time it's running, then you know the generator
section is working. If not, then you know you have bigger problems.