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..

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?