 All right, it's time to get ready got my thermals Got our hat on got our uniform on. It's time to go get busy what we're gonna be working on as a generator We're not gonna work on this generator because this is my generator and this is what I used to get my house up and going This stays inside the garage where it's nice and warm and it's when it needs to run I come over to it. I turn it on I choke it and then I Start it right up got a little Core there goes right into my heavy-duty plug there, which goes in my breaker box I have a special disconnect build on it It starts up it runs and it powers the whole house hasn't given me any problems yet granted It's only got 81 hours. So it stays on standby. I got the battery replaced this year And I keep tracking my changes and stuff I actually write down the hours that it was done at what kind of oil I've got so what we're gonna do though is we're gonna go work on a home standby generator and See what's wrong with it. The problem with today is it's about 15 degrees and it's snowy Let's go take a look at it and see what's going on and see if it's not a battery issue fuel issue snow issue or maintenance issue Now one of the other things I didn't mention it could be is the environmental Some of these generators don't like to start when it's extremely cold now They do have cold weather kits for them that helps out quite a bit and they've made some major Fruits over the years with electronics changing like they do all the time You know the first generation didn't have choke. They didn't have heaters They didn't have a lot of stuff the brushes with freeze into place They just have a fit they lock out on undervoltage because they couldn't make voltage because the brushes are frozen in place A lot of things affected them So we're gonna go take a look at this one. They just said it has a red light I'm not sure exactly what it is. It's causing it So we're gonna take a look at it see what's going on But you know something to consider before you guys go in to start servicing generators is Think about what when you're gonna be working on them They always break when they're needed when are they needed they're needed in the extreme cold Extreme hot when it's raining Snowing basically extreme crappy weather. So before you hop into it Just make sure you're ready to work in this kind of weather. I can't imagine why May not have started and ran, but we'll take a look Gotta remember You got to bring a shovel with you just in case because as you can tell the truck's not really built for snow I mean I weigh it close to 10,000 pounds, but It It's amazing how easy these can get stuck so it What I'll do is I'll pull in I'll back up and forth a few times And in that way I try to get myself a path and also try to point my nose to the roads It's a lot easier to get out Let's uh, let's go talk to the customer and find out what the complaint is Can't get to the front door that way. So I guess we'll just walk through the back. Hopefully we can get to somebody All right, well, they'll probably hear me out here working There's no way to get to their door and I don't think they want me trudging through the thing So we have a RPM since loss I'm gonna tell you guys right now. It's not your do-yourself channel Like I said before it costs money for us to go to school for these things I am doing this for the guys that need extra help not saying I'm all that because I don't do near the many as I used to but a lot of times, you know, it's Just the normal things that need maintenance You can see that the snow probably got sucked into there and it wouldn't surprise me with these crazy temperatures as brushes might have froze But that's just kind of free judging it See we're rat on our oil make sure the obvious stuff's taken care of which looks good enough Check my filter make sure we got ice and all that in there, which does not appear to be Don't see any oil down there in the air filter area Be careful these boxes man. They get cold. They get brittle We'll go ahead and reset this thing. Take it to off inner service form sure Inner switched off back to auto ready to roll. Let's go to manual see if it starts to start and run and Lucky there RPM sense loss, you know what that is boys and girls. That's we spend a lot of money on a generator But we don't replace the battery when it needs replaced Generally the battery I recommend is changed every four years I don't care if you normally get more out of that and then that but you spent this much money on it Spend the money on a new battery every four years I'm gonna go ahead and check the battery make certain that that's what's going on But I can just about tell you that's what's going on. That is probably one of my most common things This is one of the newer ones which You got to take this whole right hand corner off here Which I think it pops off on the side. I Believe we got just take these out here. So I gotta go grab some tools Kind is better for the overall part, but kind of a pain to butt to you two other ways All right So First thing I seen was the battery Cable they're using now as garbage Look at that. I Don't know when they went to this. It was fairly loose. These are some some of the best batteries out there the X side here, but when we check the Battery here, they put it under a load It drops down about ten point four ish area The battery might be just a little bit low, but at the age we've got here. I'm going to recommend we replace it I bet you if we check the water levels, they're probably low also so One thing about this cover the way they switched it which was pretty nice is You can actually get the battery out so that's pretty sweet I mean that was one big improvement, but this right here those things are just asking me broken off so They would have made about something more resistant. I guess it would have been fine, but Unfortunately, those just aren't cutting the mustard right there at all I'm going to pop the top of that cover there and look in the water levels I have mixed feelings on Serviceable batteries are not myself personally. I prefer serviceable batteries, but most people don't ever service them So I check the battery water levels fine. I'm going to leave it up to the customers their money and let them make the decision See if we can see a date on this out here too August 17 is that what it is? Even if it is I mean it had a good connection and good enough that it would change transferred power To the thing to start it. I'm going to Hold that ground tighter to it. I'll pair up pair of vice grips on there and see if it'll start it if it will great I don't like the fact that it's not charged And relying on the charger of the generator to charge it's not a good idea It's just a trickle charger. We went ahead and got a pair of vice grips on there This is on the negative terminal so we won't have any issues with shortening. It's outside of the thing I'm going to see if the thing will start now It does start customer said she wants it replaced either way So that's a good sign We'll go ahead and go get them one one of the batteries that way they're good to go Got to check through here see how many hours are on it too. She wants to schedule up a maintenance on it So it's good to know that this one's going to start. This is a this is one of the newer ones Which these are the ones I've had the least problems with I believe Without going through my books because like I said, I do maybe four or five of these a year now I just don't do them like I used to so the um The software on these ones is able to be updated through the usb port there And they add us a few tricks to it to allow it to run longer so that it would Wear off any ice it gets on the brushes and stuff like that So I'm going to go get that real quick and get her put in here All right, so we got her cut off here I don't like these type of clamps. I like the solder on style But I would had it going all the way across town and spent quite a bit of extra Time doing that and since we're going to come back and do the maintenance on this in the summer I told her we could just bring those when we come back I'm going to go ahead and spray these terminals down and then get this thing up and going I got that one done it up being a simple one. I got stuck in her driveway back and back in She had to pull me forward out of that and then I barely got back out that's starting to warm up a little bit We're up to 16 now. So it must be softening up the eye of the snow a little bit She had that real fine pea gravel stone, which doesn't get any traction. So Batteries changed got it scheduled as you see it in there. She had 19 hours of runtime on it That's all it's ran now for the last 18 19 20 21 for the last four years. It's ran 19 hours Um, so that's that uh, we got scheduled up for in the summertime when it's decent weather Like I said, I don't like those clamps. I prefer the kind that you can solder on they make a nice good connection But I didn't want to come all the way across town to go get it. So anyhow, that's just one of the simple things So my advice to anyone out there that has a generator As far as homeowners, the only thing I recommend is keep your battery changed every four years If you don't want to that's up to you you can pay somebody to come out at nighttime or on the weekend And you can pay twice as much Or, uh, you know, you can just be proactive and get it taken care of The cost of the generator is very, uh costly So a couple bucks for a battery is not that much money when you look at it in the realm of things So anyhow, um That's going to wrap that one up if you like it, you know what to do until next time guys We'll catch you on the next one