Great pics Bill, I’ll bet it’s cold over there. It’s been pretty cloudy here in the Wenatchee valley and starting to snow again.
Keep on Gasifiing. Bob
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Hi Bob,
It is a little warmer this AM when I woke up. We were at -16°F. Yesterday was -24F. With the cold weather brings sun which keeps from having to run the generator. 
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I like your positive attitude Bill. I try not to swear but I probably would have said " not quite so @#%^ cold"
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I bought a bigger generator to charge my batteries faster. It has an electric start but it was too cold to turn over. So I took the small suitcase generator from the inside of the warm cabin and used that for the first 20 minutes. I aim the exhaust towards the big generator at a safe distance as to only warm the the bigger generator and be sure it wouldn’t burn anything. After 20 minutes I started the big generator with ease.
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Now that is thinking outside the box.
Good rural, “use what you DO got, to just get-it-done”
Regards
Steve Unruh
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BillS, I’m figuring you went ahead and got the Craftsman generator instead.
I’ve been getting at least 1500 hours oprational life out of my outdoor 4-stoke air coolled since the 90’s.
Here’s how.
After the first 2 oil changes at 5 hours and 50 hours I switch them over to Castrol 5-50 fully synthetic motor oil.
Important to use the regular non-synthetic oil until then to allow for rings setting in.
Important to in that time period to DO good break-in operation. Means only 1/4 loading until warmed up. Then vary with 1/2 loading for no longer than one half hour. Drop back to 1/4 loading for a half an hour. Do this for the whole first 5 hours. Then out to 50 hours 1/2 loading for half an hour to full loading for half an hour. Back and forth. Bit better, shorter overall time to fully seated in if you could also vary the constant speed.
And my wood splittewr With a 10.5 B&S DOES get from a cold start/ran every day in the winter no matter the temps. I work. It works. Even up to 100F summers. Same with all that I own. I work - you will work too.
I do crankcase hand feel and not full load/RPM it until felt warmth to the oil.
last tip is ignore the time intervals for oil changing. On gasoline use oil coloring change. Will happen much faster in the winter and with lots of cold staring. The oil is not going bad. It IS accumulating contaminants. Drain/get them out. These engines only take 1-2 quarts. Save the engine. Heat burn the oil somewhere else.
This winter unable to find new stocks of the Castrol 5-50.
Using now a marine Quicksilver fully synthetic 0-40 from Walmart. Another 5 years and I could maybe experience vouch for it. I keep looking for the proven Castrol 5-50.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Oh . . . only 1610 hours on the longest in-use all aluminum engine using this lube style because I cannot keep the rest of that riding lawn mover welded up together. Ha! Wife gave up on incapable ME. Bought new last summer. That 17…5 hp Kohler engine mine now for sure. I’ll be a long time waiting for her new 18 hp V-Twin Kawasaki.
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that cold air and sun makes them panels kick ass makes the cold good for something.
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steve is 1500 hours a typo
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Uhg… Bill you are bringing it all back to me now… I used to keep a $99, 900 watt two stroke in the house for cold mornings. The $2000 propane autostart hated the cold and hated propane tanks below 20%. Start the 2 stroke, plug in the 20 amp car charger point the exhaust at the prima dona, wait a half hour try to start it. Agree with Steve the synthetic gave it it’s best starts. By far the best value for money I bought was the on sale $229 Coleman powermax 3500. It has an hour meter currently at over 800 with nothing done but oil changes and a spark plug. Dollar for dollar it blew the pants off the Onan from a phone truck or the Briggs propane monster. Still use the Coleman for long power outages that drain the batteries or jobs without power.
Best regards, David Baillie
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Hit the button too fast. The one thing you will have to figure out is the best charge amperage for your battery bank size. Genny talk so often trends toward big I find. For me 1kw for charging and 1 or 2 for the house was all I could ever use anyways…
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Hi Bill,
I’ve never seen that phenomenon before, pretty interesting. We had this view on one cold windy afternoon. Never seen clouds quite like this before either.
Pepe
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They look like chem-trails clouds made by jets to me. See a lot of them out west.
Bob
I am with bobmac on the chemtrails, they openly secretly admit doing it, last time i caught the flu,i seen dark clouds the day before,after the jets were done flying around the sky,usually they are lighter colors.The clouds due look awesome this times of year though yeah man yeah.
Thanks for the generator tips.
Steve, I went to Sears here in Duluth and they didn’t have any generators in stock and it would take 7-10 days for one to arrive. I ended up calling the salesman that I’ve dealt with for the last 10 years at Northern Tool. He gave me a good discount on a 7k electric start and a 2 year warranty. He always done good by me in the past. I explained my needs and budget as well as the problems I’ve already had. So he called the store where I was at and talked to the manager and worked things out. Mind you this all took place before your posts. I inquired about synthetic oil and the salesman said no. He even was against a synthetic blend. I have a 55 gallon drum of synthetic blend coming here in the next few months. But after seeing your suggestions, I will have to overlook his recommendations.
This generator if it works out should be enough for my welder too. A very important factor for me.
Maybe in a couple of years I will be able to afford a decent Honda.
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Not sure about synthetic, though it used too be too use non detergent oil in small engines, not too sure of proper oil for my snow blower either, some oil foams more than others while the crankshaft stirs it.
O.K.
On synthetics in small aluminum engines. Especially air cooled.
Yes PaulMcB I did mean sixteen hundred and ten hours ran on a single cylinder Kohler 17.5 engine. Still has good compression and power; and no smoking. JD branded low line 42" dual blade riding lawn mower.
I bid-bought at an estate sale for $350 (grrrr - exceeded my max $300 limit!) an exact same model JD branded rider mower for the mower deck parts, front axle, extra wheels & tires, starter, etc. It had six hundred and some odd hours on it. Stars and runs ok. Bit engine internally noisy and smokes. It had been always ran on 30 wt. Summer use only.
One correction: the 0-40 I said above was actually a gallon of Mobile 1 that I picked up when I could no longer find the Castrol 5-50.
The Mobile 1 is API spec’ed as SN,SM
The Castol was spec’ed as SF, SM
The Quicksilver is actually 5w-40. API spec’ed as SF/SG/SJ/SL/SM
The omission of the “N” is significant as reading SN requires the removal of all zinc and other metallic’s as additives. These are machined metals surface re-coaters and significant in lessening carbons and other adhesions. Zinc is one of the magic’s in the Risoline formula. One of the “magic pixie dust” in Hornady’s CFR (copper fouling reducing) canister reloading powered.
This Quicksilver “Full Synthetic” is at the marine shelf at WalMart. A Mercury Marine product.
Bottle is labled:
4-STROKE ATV AND UTV OIL
Recommended for use in air- or liquid cooled engines.
Provides protection in all climates / seasons
Easy starting at all temperatures
We clutch compatible
(more, more, more - fingers tiring)
Meets or exceeds manufacture’s warranty requirements. Using this product will not void manufacturers warranty.
On oils for outdoor four-stroke air-cooled engines you do have to be careful about a few things.
Does that engine have an oil pump with an oil filter?
If just splash lubricated then the old standard “safe” advise was to use a single viscosity NON-Detergent oil. Hard metalics were suppose to then be able to settle down, safe into the bottom of the crankcase.
Two problems:
almost imposible to find a high rated API specc’d non-detergent. “HD” means has the better additives in it. NAPA stores catering to truck/industrial only place I can find the good 30 wts HD, non-detergent’s.
Those same best practices non-detergent in manual’s advisers used to say use 20W-20 in cold weather. Good luck finding that anymore, chuck. Newer manual’s give-up and say use now to use 10-30 in the winter.
I think this is too thick cold to lube a splash oiled system.
2 nd problem is nealy all of the new splash lubber’s have such small, shallow crank cases I do not believe there is anywhere for undisturbed settling anymore.
Another “what is your engine” oil use decider is whether it has manual adjusted valves, or hydraulic lifter valves. Manual adjuster valves like the outdoor quipment Kaksaki’s and Honda’s and you can use any oil typle and weight as far as the valves are concerned. Even very good multi-source locals here with 300K-400K mileage high old Honda cars used on always 30 wt HD insisting that a single weight gives the longest cylinder and bearings wear useage.
But use 30 wt in a hydraulis lifter Kohler , Briggs & Stratton at low temperature is almost a sure way to burn a valve being cold oil lifter held open.
Ha! Ha! See modern life is not easy/pleasie.
Lots of decisions to make and live with.
We Are All on Our Way To Better
Steve Unruh
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That is why they recommend very frequent oil changes. Do they put magnets in there anymore to catch metal particles?
Don M
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Good reading on how motor oil and viscosity works:
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Here’s a video of a little walk around of my little homestead. A ton of projects started that can hopefully can be continued next season.
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Bill: do you have the containers full?? I’m thinking one would make a great “winter” shop. My shop is 30x50 with a 12 ft ceiling. It just takes too long to get that big an area warm enough to work.
Your birch trees looks fairly small, but yesterday I was talking with q woodsman and he said for fire wood it is best to split the bark down the center on birch to let the wood dry with out getting punky.TomC
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