Honda/Yamaha generators and reliability

yeh good one Mike.

See my post to recent Kipor situ and check my old post.

Sure would like to hear 'bout the H in particular as I am about to lay down the loot for a 2kva.....

Grrr!!!

I was going to buy a Kipor 1000 watt gennie, and have have been watching ebay but now all the 1000w and 2000w are gone...nowhere to be seen.

As a side note.... a mate of mine has the GMC 850w jobbie and fried the power pack in his Jayco camper last month. He went out and bought one of the Scorpions from Repco for $299.00. Supposedly "sine wave" but got it home and checked with his multi meter, it runs at 270 volts at start up and then sits on 260 volts???? what the?

I'm afraid it comes down to the old saying, " You get what you paid for"
I own a 2 kva Honda, have for 3 years and don't regret paying the extra $ for it, BUT, I was so close to buying a Kipor, so glad I didn't
Bill

Just shelled out 1400 smackers for a Honda EU10i and I would say the reputation and reliability were MAJOR factors affecting my purchase decision. I also noted this in the customer survey that arrived from Honda head office a week after the purchase.

The 4 year warranty on the Honda was also a big influence in choosing it over the Yamaha which was marginally cheaper and also has an excellent reputation. I also found the Honda to be a cleaner and simpler design to look at and easier to operate.

It was that very lack of negative feedback that Mike mentions that initially narrowed the choice to the big two as opposed to stuffingaround and "taking thy chances" with the cheaper offerings.

Cheers

Mr Doe failed to mention that I fried his battery charger whilst on KI with my
GMC 850.

Now I would emphasie highly that GMC's don't really fail in the sense of the word, they just have a habit of 'fying' electronics that like/need a fine/delicate source of electric current.

Put a good old drill, angle grinder etc on them and they relish the 'challenge'

Having said all that, I must admit that the aforementioned GMC actually fried two battery chargers, no 1 being onl cause for suspicion with Mr Does being the catalyst for a change.

So I bought a Honda 2.0i at the recent Melb 4WD show after having a chat to a guy there that works at the OBC with BONZ, and I. His full time job is with Engel (of all things).

Anyway, after talking to him, I dismissed the first choice of an extremely cheap Kipor 2.0 and just went off to the Honda stand and had 'in depth' discussions with them and when everything was to how I liked it - bought the sucker.

Apart from super excellent price - it came with a five year guarantee.

So far so good, had it driving a micro-wave for a test run when I got it home.

Didn't even get a sweat up and that 'eco' setting is just ace.

I was camped at Booroola early this year & got talking to another camper about generators, he informs me his eu10 has done just over 3,000hrs,with a brand new one in the box ready for when it fails. He fishes the river every year for 3months using the jenny & solar , running a fridge & house hold freeser,lights,I have a yamaha 1 kva which has done about 300 hrs ,no trouble so far.
Friar

I have Both a Kipor 1 kva and a Honda I0i, I have had the Kipor for about 18 Months and the Honda was purchased because I bought the Kipor!!!
The Kipor was used to run a Waeco 40l Frig and a 3 Stage Battery Charger it lasted just long enough for the warranty to run out, then it would not start until given a service and new spark plug and then it would hold the load for about 30 minutes, running rough as guts and then spit the load and go into over rev mode until switched off.
Unfortunately I was headed bush when the spit happened, I was able to buy the Honda before getting too involved and then used the Kipor as ballast for the rest of the trip.
The Honda ran the original load as well as two 60 watt incandescant bulbs on eco throttle and never raised a sweat!
Incidentally I am totally unimpressed with the Kipor service organisation in Brisbane.

eerfree

I have not long returned from a 4 month trip up into Qld, using a Honda e01. Plugged into the Camper which has a 3 stage charger fitted, it runs the 90 lt fridge, charges 3 battries, 2 in the camper and aux in the vehicle (with 40lt Engle attched to 12v), and 240 lights and CD/Tuner player.

All this on the ECO mode with 9hrs run time to the tank. Ran like a dream with one oil change halfway through the trip.

My Honda Eu300 (300 watt) was built last century and is still going well. Still starts first pull after many years only draw back is it requires leaded fuel. It is not as efficient as the newer ones but is reliable.

As for output voltage (240V) it would be interesting to measure the mains supply at home as I think it would be 240V +/- a percentage. Anybody know what it is? You will also need a true RMS meter to measure it as most meters only calculate 0.707 of the peak voltage. This is accurate if it is a pure non distorted sine wave which is rare.

Redeye

Hi Mike,
Interesting question.
I own two Honda EU10i's. One is quite old, I can't remember when it was purchased and one about 3 years old. (The old one is

actually a different shade of red in the plastic than the new one, more scarlet than red)
They have both done quite a few hours without anything more than a filter clean and an oil change. Does this make them more

reliable than my mates "Diesel" brand? No idea, his is less than 12 months old.
I also have the paralleling cable for them and when the need arises I can join them to produce a peak output slightly higher

than an EU20i. This feature is sometimes quite handy.

One interesting thing I've done recently is hook the oscilloscope (Yokogawa DL1540CL) up to a few pieces of equipment,

including the UE10i's.

What I've learnt is the term "Pure Sinewave" is very much open to individual interpretation. As you and I both know a static

power station such as your Loy Yang's in Vic and Bayswater's in NSW have millions of dollars worth of controls and equipment

to assure a Pure Sinewave, something that isn't truly achievable in portable power equipment.
The mains here in our office in Newcastle are a very clean Sine Wave. (My reference point)

I tested a few different Inverters of both the modified and the alledged "Pure Sinewave" type. Results where at best

variable. The biggest thing that really threw the Pure Sinewave inverter was a microwave oven, it shot an already unusual

waveform to pieces.

The Honda's produced the most sinusoidal output of everything I tested though this waveform had for want of a better term

"whiskers" on it. When paralleled the EU10i's performed slightly worse on the output front than they did running as

individuals.
The interesting part of the paralleling of the EU10i's is they connect the 240V outputs in parallel. The waveform looks like

it has some form of data communications superimposed on it. (This may explain the "whiskers") And probably makes sense from a

load sharing perspective as they both appear to contribute 50%.

Some of the cheaper generators I tested had some very unusual outputs and would probably explain why some people are

reporting the "death" of battery chargers and other equipment.

From my testing and purely an electrical engineering perspective to produce clean pure sinusoidal power, you get what you pay for.

Geoff.

Like you Mike, I run a GMC 850 but have had limited use due to my solar being sufficient most of the time. I (being a bit electronically challenged) err on the safe side and tend to use it mainly for re-charging the battery when necessary and it has been ok so far but not really tested.

One thing I have to say though; last year, we were camping next to a bloke up the NSW coast and he had an old Honda gennie. Said he bought it 2nd hand 16 years ago - and it sure looked it's age - but guess what? It started 1st pull every time. One day............maybe

Well Mike I'm on my 2nd honda genny now have the EU20i and no problems but I did have problems with the EU10i a few years back. When I first bought that one I had just sold my 3 way fridge as I found it no good for our camping needs, so I thought why not take my 140l bar fridge from home, the genny ran it like a dream. Problem was had to run it as close to 24hours a day as possible (which wasn't a problem as it was so quiet)would fuel up last thing before retiring and let it go until it ran out of fuel, then first thing in the morning refuel. I used to pride myself on the amount of hours I would get on 2.2l of fuel, up to 12hours, one thing was the low oil cut out would activate if it got a bit low on oil. This we did for a couple of years and no problem until I went to start it in preparation for a trip and noticed it was running rough and not handling even 750w, so took it to the local honda dealer for a look next day he said I had a scored bore ( the 1kva has an alloy bore apparently)and it needed replacing as well as the rings, it was caused by carbon build up and a piece breaking off and doing the damage. Thought beauty still under warranty get it fixed for free, but he phoned the next day and said Melbourne head office would not cover it as it was a lack of maintenance issue. I saw red as I did every thing they said in the book even changed the oil every 50hours instead of the suggested 100h, but apparently the newer books say to have the carbon cleaned every 300hours which was not in my book (so I thought I had him there)also he said it was not hondas fault that we have bad fuel here in Queensland, so he would not pay. After a couple of phone calls to different people down there over different days they agreed to pay half the repairs so I thought I better take the offer and payed $360 for my half of the recond engine. Was given a new book with updated maintenance schedule and told to only use premium fuel and run it hard every now and then and get the 300h carbon services, which I did until 18months later same problem seemed to be happening again and they told me to put a whole new motor in this time. Well had enough of the alloy bore and now own a 2kva and have 12v fridges and no problems. I must add I probably did about 2000 hours the first time with it idling away with the eco switch on, oh they don't like being left out in the rain either as a mate of mine found out it arked between A and N and cut a groove in the output 240v socket and so needed replacing.
Wazzaaa

Honda would be my first choice, even with cost.

We run a few; couple of generators, several fire fighters and a couple running hydraulic pumps.

Reliable, easy to start.

The rescue truck has briggs & stratton. You need three days warning to get the bastard going. (I know there's no reason to mention this mob, I just couldn't help myself!!)