It's Electrifying.

[cheesy]

Just being a smartass.

Truth be told, my kids took the grandsons to see my folks this week in northern Wisconsin. They hadn't yet met Owen and they can't get enough of Eli. I guess fun was had by all.

Dad sent down his old Generac(here's the 'Electrifying' part)generator for me to take a look at. This is one that survived the rollover accident Mom and Dad were in several years ago.

He said he was using it and it just quit running. He checked and it only had 20 psi of compression. He'd taken it to a couple of local repair shops and was told "because it was so old, it couldn't be fixed". Twice. No one even took the time to look at it.

So, it gets to me. I only have a 'three handed compression gauge' (I need to do something about that), so I do the 'Thumb over the spark plug hole test'. Yup, very little compression. Poured some Sea Foam in the cylinder and tried the thumb test again. No better but I now have Sea Foam leaking out the carb. Intake valve stuck open? Put the borescope down the hole and see lots of carbon deposits but the cylinder looks pretty good. It's a flat head Robin engine, so I can't see the valves. Next step is to pull the head.

Yuck! Wish I'd had my camera. Besides the heavy carbon deposits, there was some fibrous brown stuff, like little hair balls, in the deposits. Some of those settled on the intake valve seat. There was the compression loss. Fifteen minutes worth of scraping and wiring brushing had everything cleaned up.

I put the head back on, installed the minimum of stuff to try starting it, and pulled the rope. It started on the third pull. And smoked bad. Guess I also got some Sea Foam down the exhaust and into the muffler because it cleared up in about ten minutes. No skeeters for awhile.

I call my Dad and tell him it's running. He's happy and want's to know what I did. I tell him and he says "Well, you got a generator. You were gonna end up with it anyway. Next time you come up, though, bring it with so we can show those clowns at the shop what little it took to fix it." That's my Dad, a vindictive old cuss.

So, I have a free generator that is in need of a wheel kit. It's a heavy bugger. I haven't tossed the dual rear wheels from the mini bike yet so I think I have a head start on that.