Marching Band Honda Generator update + Question
Hello everyone,
I am a band director who posted a few months ago asking for help with our Honda generator that was surging. I received a lot of help and feedback from you and I am very appreciative of it. Thank you.
We have just concluded our marching season and I wanted to provide an update…
Some things that I took/tried from my post:
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Seafoam in every gas fill up. I can’t really “tell” a difference at the moment, but it gives me peace of mind knowing that it’s really healthy for the engine.
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Someone mentioned trying to pull out the choke to halfway to see if this helped the issue. To my surprise, it DID. When the choke is out halfway, the stuttering/pulsing completely stopped. I was amazed. However, is this now something that I’m going to have to always do now? I honestly don’t really understand. Before the one morning that I described in my post (where I may have altered the order of turning on the generator), I NEVER had to pull the choke to halfway for it to make a smooth sound. Will I now always have to do this? Why?? And can this be fixed if I took it to the shop?
A QUESTION: Seeing as we are now done with our fall marching/football season, the next time we will use this generator will be NEXT August… there is about 1/3rd left in the gas tank. What should I do to preserve our generator until next August? Should I empty out the gas tank? Fuel stabilizer? Run it once a month? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Again, thank you all for your help.
Posted Oct 31, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC
Only running righr at half choke means at no choke the engine is running lean with no choke. This is usually a sign of a partially clogged carburetor. It can also be a sign of loose or misadjusted valves, but most commonly it's carburetor related.
I would make sure the valves are set correctly then look at replacing the carburetor. Running at half choke all the time will shorten the life of the engine.
Stupid question: but If it is a partially clogged carburetor, could I (or someone else) just… open it up and… un-clog it? How difficult is this procedure?
Yeah, usually this requires a complete disassembly and cleaning. This can be done manually or with a solution or cleaner.
If you plan to regularly clean carburetors a solution like ChemDip, available at auto supply stores, is great for this, otherwise a good sonic cleaner can be had from Amazon for fairly cheap, and you can use solvents like simple green and laundry detergent to effectively clean carbs.
Otherwise a can of carb cleaner and some thin wire can be used to clean a carb, if you want to go the cheap and dirty route.