Another quick revisit because I finally did a run-to-empty session. It was mostly to use up the two year old fuel in the onboard tank, but also to see how close my full-tank runtime guesstimates were. With a 300 watt load I got just over of 13 hours before it started sputtering. I tried to give it a 3000 watt load with a couple of space heaters but it was warm enough they kept tripping off on overheat even with fans providing additional airflow. Our max average load will be somewhere just shy of 1000w if we're not running the A/C, maybe 750-ish if I take time to kill a bunch of vampire loads, so I figure a solid 9-10 hours runtime. Reduce by 30-35% if we need A/C to keep anything from overheating.
Fuel stagnation is my main concern. After each regular exercise run I refill the onboard tank from one of the storage cans, empty what's left into the truck, and refill the can with fresh fuel. I have four cans I rotate through so stored fuel is never older than eight or nine months, a year at most. Unfortunately, the generator only uses a couple pints per session so onboard fuel gets ever older over time. There's just not enough fresh fuel being added to keep up. An extended runtime session for tank draining is no biggie, but it's unnecessary runtime hours. Plus, it's just loud enough that I'm concerned an all-day session, or two long sessions over two days, will annoy the neighbors. A simple tank drain would solve the problem. I'm surprised it's not a factory provision since extended storage prep is a common thing.
I've kept it on a battery maintainer and so far no problems, starts right up with no hesitation or indications of a weak battery. Even so, I'll replace it at three years as a preventive maintenance item.
Brad
