On Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 1:02:41 PM UTC-4, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 5/25/2019 12:02 PM, wrote:

I lived without one for 33 years and Irma was really the only time I
needed it. After Charley the lights were back in a day. We went to bed
in the dark and the power coming on woke us up. The only reason I
bought one was someone made me a deal I couldn't refuse ($300 for one
new in a 10 year old box). He bought it after Charley (2004) and sold
it to me in 2014, never having even started it. He had oil in it and
pulled it over every year or two but did not put gas in it. .


That's why I don't want to invest in a big whole house unit for $5k to
$10k installed. Would be cheaper to fly north of a week until the power
comes on.

I got one of those for free, a Generac. A neighbor had one that was maybe
five or seven years old, it crapped out, the company said it wasn't worth
fixing. It was in good shape, the engine started up, it ran for about
30 secs, then shut down. Knowing just that, I figured maybe it was
something fixable, so I picked it up. Quickly found out that after it
started, it wasn't producing any voltage. Got the service manual and
as best I could tell without special eqpt, it was likely the rotor that
was shot. I think a new one was $350. But I wasn't sure that was all
that was wrong with it either. And then I looked at reviews on Amazon,
and OMG, what a disaster! Review after review of people having everything
from brand new ones leaking oil, to similar failures to this after just
a few years. So, I gave up fixing it and parted it out on Ebay.

That was interesting. Most of the modules went quickly. Oddly, first
thing I sold was the cabinet. Then some nut
in IL wanted all kinds of weird stuff, like the front panel, the wiring
harnesses. Turns out he paid $800 for basically an engine and the
generator section, nothing else! Bought it on CL. Unbelievable.
I mean if that's all you have, how are you ever going to find all
the other parts and what will all that cost? He bought a couple hundred
just from me. I'd lay bets it all went into the crapper or he had to
sell it on Ebay.

The engine took awhile. I was asking $350. I had it listed for local
pickup only, so that makes it much harder. Some guy in Puerto Rico
emails me and wants to know if I will sell it to him if he has a
company pick it up and ship it. I said, sure, but unless you have
some special way, that's going to be expensive. He buys it, it takes
a couple weeks, I have to prod him along, but finally the shipping
company calls me up. They want to know if I have a loading dock and
confirm that it's ready to go on a pallet! ROFL. Took another week,
they set up a time to pick it up, no show. Second time, they show
up and take it. I asked the guy in PR how much it cost to ship,
he said they initially told him $300, it wound up being $800!
Also, hard to imagine that a generator company in PR that sells Generac
would not have a used engine there, from some other crap one where
the gen section failed, instead of getting it from me.


ROFL

I told him he should have just told me that, I would have agreed to
cancel the transaction. But he says he's a man of his word, so he
went through with it. This was before their big hurrican, I hope he
had it working and it served him for that. If it ran giving him power
for several months, it would make it worth it. But with all those
terrible reports about Generac on Amazon, I wouldn't put any faith
in their products. In the end, I think I probably made $700 bucks
off that free generator.