Here is an old BGE I saved from scrap.
It had a good set of boards in it but I three more like it with bad boards.
Its a pain in the arse to find decent used boards and refurbished or new aftermarket are expensive.
( red glyptal point instead of green I did that for no particular reason, other than it was a rust bucket when I found it .)
The intended purpose of red Glyptal is insulating varnish so if you find a used generator and open up and see this its a pretty good indication to you that someone in a shop has probably stripped cleaned and serviced a generator at one time )
( Kohler plant in this photo from the early 60s )
This was a originally a Natural gas stationary unit from the 70s.
Its a 3600rpm unit and was powered by K 181 Ep engine.
The engine seized from water ingress through the exhaust system but the head and controls had very low hours on them.
When an exhaust going out of a building does not have a trap and drain your going to have problems....
I really like the EL-8 controller and this one had some feature I liked to much to scrap out so I Swapped in a low hour Honda GX240 from Koshin 4500 I scrapped out.
Its not a one to one swap let me warn you!
The EP engines and not like regular K series engines and they have a proprietary taped on the crank.
The crank in it is from a Chinese Generator I special ordered and the counter balancer gear was removed ( does not make a significant difference on a small engine like the 240 )
Several different tapers are used in generators, Onan was bad for using different tapers on basicly identical engines )
The Koshin had a burned Idle control board but I kept the kick down solenoid and made a modified linkage to work with all the mixed up parts so I could add that idle control again later if I wanted ( and I found a replacement board from a Wacker )
The EL-8 controller will detect if the generator is not turning above a certain rpm around 1500 - 2000 rpm
The controller will attempt to "restart " what looks like a stalled engine bellow that thresh hold.
( note this head is rated at 3000 watt not the 4500 of the Koshin but the Kohler K181 was about the same HP, this unit was built like this so you could burn natural gas )
For comparison...
A new Champion 4000 watt will have about a 212 or 196 cc Honda GX engine clone rated at about 6.5 - 7 hp.
Realistically you want about 1 hp of continues rated power for every 500watts of generator output and the small block clones don't have the real power available to do what the manufactures claim...
A kohler K181 was rated at nearly 8 hp ( 305 cc )
A Honda GX240 is nearly the same hp ( 240cc, but over head valve )
This generator can actually pull its rated nameplate rating continuously.
These are all things you need to think about when you buy a generator.
If you need 4000 watts from a modern set then you should buy a 5000 watt generator and not expect it to reliably pull more that 4000 watts.
Here is a side by side photo of the rods and pistons from a small block GX200 and the big block GX240 engines.
There is only 4mm ( 1/16 of an inch give or take )difference in stroke between the two engines, but there is a lot more heft in the rods, larger bearings and a long rod for a lower side loading stress on the big block.
All things to consider when your shopping for a long life engine.
I'm not posting this to brag.
if you look on Kijiji you often see generators painted and tinkered with if they are old and used.
Buyer beware!
Fresh paint and anything odd might be headaches.
No one but me can really work on that gold coloured Kohler now
Red Glyptal is probably an indication of work done at a professional service centre and is not something to be too alarmed about..
I know a lot here to digest and read.
…..life is not static…change is one of the few constants on earth….
