Generac Standby system

[kevink1955]

I know most on the site hate Generac, I have all Onans at work. When it came to a standby system at home I went Generac 6 years ago. Not exactly happy with the belt drive, would have preferred direct drive and I think the new units are direct. It has never failed me.

Was sitting home today when I heard fire sirens close by. about 5 Minutes later the lights go out. It was a good feeling when 15 seconds later I hear the generator cranking over and coming up to speed. 10 seconds later the wack of the transfer switch closing and we have power.

Never lost internet connection due to the UPS on the cable modem and router, also have Vonage phone service that ran fine during the outage.

It turns out there was a major fire in town and a service fault caused a breaker on the pole to open. The power company could not get to it until the FD put the fire out. Power was out for 4 hours and things went on normally.

Would much rather have one of my Onans here but the little 6 kw Generac did good today as it did about 3 years ago when we had the big N.E. blackout.

We have an Autistic child who freaks out when the lights go out so this thing has paid for it's self more than a few times. Not to mention the cool factor, It's nice to be the only house on the block with all the lights on

I promise my next house will be Onan, we are going to be replacing a 1963 KB series at work in 2 years, may be a little big (80kw) but I will be the first kid on the block to own one

[Jim Davis]

It appears that all the cellphone towers in my part of the country are backed up by Generac, some diesel some propane. Having my own backup I notice these things and I have yet to see an Onan.

[Jim Rankin]

I had 2 85KR sets, and still have one at the dairy. Sold the other to my neighbor for his dairy. They both have the IH549 V8 engine. I love them. Compared to diesel sets they are much quieter, crank well on one normal sized 12V battery even in the cold, and running on propane, the fuel never goes bad.

Hope you get the one from work when it's time. As you say, a bit of overkill for a home

I guess it would have a magneciter, but the Onan diesel set we have is a magneciter as is our 25KW Onan pto generator I believe, and they've been no trouble, nada, zip, so I like magneciters. Probably more reliable in my limited experience than the next generation of electronic regulators like I have on the KR set.

[Billy J Shafer]

Kevin the main reason I hate Generac.No factory support for anyone even their dealers somtimes.I worked for a generac dealer at one time.It was a battle all the time to get anything out of them.They charge to much for their parts will not help with service problems.Its like we got your money now go away.Real shame because they have some real good units(OK YOU GUYS CAN STOP GAGGING).The reason you see alot of them around is because you can buy them real cheap,but you will pay for it in the price in parts.I needed tune up parts for one of the four cylinders 155.00 from generac 46.00 from napa.I have one at a fire station has had oil pressure sendor problems since it was installed.Generacs cure was to send the local guy a box of sensors and told him to put one on untill the problem goes away.The thing still does not work.I know some people do not like Onans or Kohlers but the two are still the best in their field.

[kevink1955]

Jim Wrote

I guess it would have a magneciter, but the Onan diesel set we have is a magneciter as is our 25KW Onan pto generator I believe, and they've been no trouble, nada, zip, so I like magneciters. Probably more reliable in my limited experience than the next generation of electronic regulators like I have on the KR set.

Yes the international is a good performer, combined with the Magniciter it has been a real good gen set. also have 1 EK with Magniciter with no problems till recently when it chucked the dust seal off the rear bearing. I wish I could say the same for the EM that had a VR-21 system, it gave nothing but trouble till the regulator and other useless hardware was replaced with a Power-Tronics regulator.

I agree that Generac is bad for support and worse for parts but for a home standby system it's OK. Still like the cool factor of being the only house on the block with every light on during a power failure.

[Jack Hottel]

I put up a Generac SGO10 for my BIL in 1988. The only thing I have had to do to it since is plugs, points & condenser and a governor output shaft seal, all from Napa. It's a good unit.
Jack Hottel

[pugs]

Originally Posted by Billy J Shafer

Kevin the main reason I hate Generac.No factory support for anyone even their dealers somtimes.I worked for a generac dealer at one time.It was a battle all the time to get anything out of them.They charge to much for their parts will not help with service problems.Its like we got your money now go away.Real shame because they have some real good units(OK YOU GUYS CAN STOP GAGGING).The reason you see alot of them around is because you can buy them real cheap,but you will pay for it in the price in parts.I needed tune up parts for one of the four cylinders 155.00 from generac 46.00 from napa.I have one at a fire station has had oil pressure sendor problems since it was installed.Generacs cure was to send the local guy a box of sensors and told him to put one on untill the problem goes away.The thing still does not work.I know some people do not like Onans or Kohlers but the two are still the best in their field.

Exactly...I deal more with the small stuff. They actually sent a guy to us to work on his standby unit. We were not setup to work on anything besides their engines at the time(since they sold the small generators to Briggs). So we look into getting setup and they send out a manual that is supposed to cover this one. Well the customers model is not listed in the book. So basically stuck playing phone tag and gave up on it. Why do I want the hassle when I could be actually fixing something.

I have gone through the same thing for engine parts on a few Generac powered generators. And now they are putting the engines on the Bobcat ZTR's that we sell. They better get a better system of parts lookup quick, because commercial mower owners will not put up with this BS. I called my distrubutor for Bobcat because they are supposedly becoming the Generac distributor for the area too and their parts lookup info is not much more than I have. They tell me they have to call Generac for just about everything.

Other than that...anything is great when it works. For a home standby system I would look elsewhere though...Coleman Powermate is where I would start. Briggs has some too, dunno if they are based on the Generacs or what...

[Gunny]

Have been around them Generacs since the late 80's, they sure do have their share of problems. They seem to change their product line weekly, makes it real hard to keep up with parts. The factory is not at all helpful, if you can get through to them. Their warranty stinks. Stood by and watched a neighbor who bought a system from Lowe's, he wanted to save a dollar. Sure, he got it cheaper than what I could have gotten it from Generac and we were a dealer at the time. He put it in and it worked the first power out tage, for 4 hours. It stooped producing power, he was too embarassed to call me so he called Lowe's, Lowe's referrd him to Generac who referred him to a local dealer who sells and installs them by the dozens. They stopped by and looked at it, informed him that since he had not gotten it from them, they weren't going to work on it. Back on the phone, first to Lowe's and then Generac, again. This time they referred him to me, he swollowed his pride and called. Open stator windings. Generac wanted us to install a new stator in 2.5 hours, including diagnostic time. As we had done a few of these before, we asked Generac for a little more time, have to remove the exhaust system and the entire cabinet, then you can get to the generator. They said nope, we can do it in 2.5 hours here in the factory so that's all the time you get. We told them to find someone else to do it and things went downhill from there. We are no longer a Generac home standby dealer and my neighbors generator is still broke.
Unless Generac starts doing things very differently soon, they will be stuck with the reputation of an inferior machine with a worthless warranty and folks will eventually realize that saving a dollar on the initial sale is no bargin in the long term.
Guess sometimes you get one that works good, kind of like sometimes you get an Onan or Kohler that doesn't but like most of the folks here, would not own one. If I were to buy a new generator, in diesel I'd go with Tradewinds, PowerTech, Kohler or Onan. In gas, Onan, Kohler, Tradewinds or Coleman. All of which have an excellent warranty backing a good product.

[Billy J Shafer]

Gunny got one for you.Local big coustomer buys a generac installs it.Local genrerac dealer will not do the startup because he did not sell it.Coustomer calls me I do the startup,generac finds out and voids his warranty.Because I am not a generac dealer.Also they shipped it to the wrong state and they wanted him to pay for shipping to the correct location.Generac motto WE GOT YOUR MONEY NOW GO AWAY.

[Steve Dawkins]

One of our customer's inherited a 25 kW Generac when they purchased another cable tv franchise. After a couple of years, the unit needed a new starter motor. It cost them $2,200 to replace the starter on a 4 cylinder LP gas fired genset! In reality, the whole unit wasn't worth that much. Within a year, the genset had other issues and has been taken off line. The building that it served is now sub-fed from another building that is backed by two 600 kW Cummins units that we installed. Now they have reliable backup power. That new starter motor sure looks pretty on that dead Generac though.

In regards to the previous posts about Coleman units, we have installed three 25 kW Coleman Power Stations, and have two more on order. They have a 4 cylinder Ford industrial engine and a Stamford Newage generator. Newage is owned by Cummins, and many of their gensets use these gen ends. This Coleman model has many nice features, and it is very quiet. I would recommend to anyone considering a new generator for their house to take a serious look at it. From an installers standpoint, it's top shelf. (And we're dyed in the wool Cummins/Onan installers.) A service tech for the local Cummins distributor quit and started his own business of repairing and p/m gensets. I hooked him up with some of the customers that we installed these Coleman units for, so he could do the service work. He was very impressed with the quality of them.