***work in progress, corrections appreciated
I’ve been doing a lot of research on gennys. I currently have a traditional/“smoke and noise” Champion 3500w genny. Traditional/“smoke and noise” gennys run at full speed all of the time and can not adjust to power draw needs. I had problems with fuel starvation on this one, a brand new carburetor did not fix the problem. The EPA restrictions (for “air quality”) in conjunction with ethanol gas make this a very common problem with carbureted small engines. The solution is to drill out the main jet on the carb. Doing that made my previously deadlines and unusable Champion, a one pull to start on one year old ethanol gas generator. No shit. Now, this genny is rock solid reliable on the old carb. This type of generator produces sometimes “unclean”or oscillating power, which is bad for high end electrical devices such as TVs, computers, etc.
Anyway, I want an inverter generator. These are not as noisy as “smoke and noise” gennys as they are designed to only run at the engine speed needed to produce the amount of power being drawn. You usually have two settings on these, “Eco”which is the aforementioned on demand engine speed setting, and of course, full throttle. These inverter gennys produce very “clean” or stable electricity, which is much better for your high end electrical devices. The inverter gennys are of course, more expensive than smoke and noise gennys. One nice thing about inverter gennys is most of them can be ran in conjunction with another to produce double the power via a parallel cable kit (example.
The no brainer, easy inverter genny purchase (if you have the money) is of course, the Honda EU2000I which of course, can be ran with another using a parallel cable kit. Too much for my blood #PoorFag . I’ve got my eye on this Harbor Freight 3500w. For around $650-$700 with an available 2 year warranty combined with its excellent reputation (especially after Irma), I view it as the thinking man’s alternative to the Honda. An alternative would be two of the Harbor Freight 2000w inverter gennys with a parallel cable kit. Out the door, with warranties, you’d be at about $200 over the price of one Honda Eu2000i.
But wait, there’s more! The HF 2000w is apparently a clone of the excellent Yamaha 2000w inverter genny and unlike the HF 3500w, there are many differently branded variants of the Chinese Yamaha clone such as this Lifan, this Westinghouse or this Duromax.. Nearly all of these can be used with a parallel cable kit.
Yamaha EF200is clone conglomeration post
PF Generator spreadsheet