I have a iQ2000 generator in the shop that a customer bought to charge his marine batteries on his boat. His complaint is that when he plugs the battery charger in to the generator, the generator spits & sputters, runs erratically, and finally the breaker gets tripped. His friend has a Honda EU 2000i generator that handles the battery charger just fine. They're both rated at 1600 running watts, so you'd think they would be the same. However, I've been told that the Honda is a pricier unit, and for good reason. I'm afraid that this generator might be a little underpowered for his application.
The engine doesn't run completely smooth. Lean at startup, but after a couple minutes of warming up, it improves quite a bit. I'm considering recommending a carburetor replacement just to cover the bases, but I don't believe that's truly the problem. I've plugged an old drill press of mine into it to see how it acts. The generator has 3 engine speeds: economy, standard, and turbo. When I've tested the generator with my drill press, I've noticed that the breaker trips and the overload light comes on consistently when I have the switch set on economy mode (supposed to be 3000 RPM's) and flip on the drill press. On standard mode (3600 RPM's), I've gotten the breaker to trip a couple of times when I turn on the drill press, but it handles the load for the most part, even though the engine labors pretty hard and revs up pretty high until things line out. And when it's on turbo (4500 RPMs), that seems to handle the load the easiest.
My customer didn't say anything about it, but I'm wondering if he left the engine speed setting on standard (the way it was when I got it), and it would handle the load better if it were set on turbo. I had him send me a picture of the data plate off his friend's Honda generator, and I noticed that it has an RPM spec of 4300, which would be similar to the turbo RPM's on the Generac. That makes me wonder if the Generac would work better if he had his RPM's up to match the Honda's engine speed.
I welcome any of your input on any of this, but I had one specific question in mind when I sat down to type this up. I tried to check the engine speed with my tachometer, and I can't get a reading, either with my inductive tach, or with my older one with the red wire you wrap around the spark plug lead. I used them on another engine just to verify that they work, and they do. It looks like the spark plug lead on the Generac might have some kind of special insulation around it that somehow blocks the signal. I was able to partially shove the sleeve back to get a better place to wrap the tach wire around, but I still got no reading. Is there a tach I could get that would read this? Or is there another way to determine RPM's? I didn't expect to run into this problem.
Thanks for any ideas! This is a tough one.