I Bought a Military Surplus Diesel Generator to Power my House

I buy, repair, and install a military surplus diesel generator to power my entire house.

[brandon]

Generator tech here, if possible you should avoid running your diesel generator under low loads for extended periods, this can lead to something called "wet stacking". A diesel engine needs to run under load in order to burn clean, under no load conditions you'll coke up the engine and shorten it's life. Simply put, you'll want to run your generator at a minumum 25% load whenever possible, and every so often you'll want to run it up to 100% for a few hours to burn off carbon and spooge buildup as well as verify function at rated capacity.

[iBasurka]

Former 91D (Power Generator Mechanic) for 8 yrs here 👋! The MEP models had common issues with wet stacking. Please run around a 80% load for around 30mins-1hr at your yearly service date. If taken care of & treated right which you are, the gen will take care of you. I've worked on every generator the US Army had to offer and also was a military contractor who would reset these generators on a daily basis. Your gen should have came with a TM (technical manual) so please refer to it for your services. If you have any questions or need some advice please feel free to reach out to me. Congrats on your purchase!

[omardude]

I cannot believe how many experienced, knowledgeable people of a technical background have collected in this comment section, it is joyful to read people share their knowledge and good advice with reasoning!!

[rhymereason]

The layout of that thing is really nice! You'd never see a commercial unit designed for such easy access and repair!

[michaelboso]

I hope that the Army mechanic who took such excellent care of this beauty sees this and feels good about it! Thanks.

[stephenskierski]

the 400 hertz are for radar systems, namely the SQS-36 Firefinder and ANTPQ-64 Sentinel. Those 10K generators have Yanmar engines and we would run them 24/7 and only shut them down for every 200 hours for oil changes. We had 2 per radar and would switch gens every 200 hours. Each generator would have 4000+ hours on them at the end of a deployment and they would go directly to Toby Hanna Army depot to get rebuilt or what we called a reset. I know those systems like the back of my hand and would by a surplus one in a heart beat.The internal tank is only good for about 8 hours of run time but you can run a line for an external tank.

[HSamee]

Part two, part two, part two. I have never connected an electrical wire in my life but I'm hooked on how informative and thorough this dude is. You've got a new subscriber.

[raulduke]

Your little trick running the whole saw bit through the vinyl siding backwards was slick. It reminded me of my apprentice days; how the old dads have real tricks for faster and better outcomes, bravo.

[skaaltel]

I work on these exact generators all the time. The water separator fuel filter you changed at 13 minutes, well, it's a good idea to leave that water drain on there. Especially when filling with jerry cans. If you don't regularly bleed the water out of that filter the ice will blow the bottom of the filter off.
If you're interested in some house-bound upgrades, a battery tender, battery blankets and block heater could help in the winter months. If you anticipate running it for a long time (greater than 12hrs straight) you can plumb a 40gal drum of fuel into the aux fuel inlet.
Common failure points on these generators are the fuel return line up top, which tends to get porous, batteries, the water separator, as mentioned, and occasionally the fuel shutoff solenoid.
If you're interested in service manuals / parts diagrams let me know. Enjoy!

[eman]

Cummins PG tech here. It would be a good idea to have a battery charger and block heater if you intend to use it during winter. Battery heater wouldn’t hurt either

[gerrybarton]

MEP mobile emergency power. I was a power production tech in the service. When a unit is no longer needed or parts are hard to acquire it was one of my task to make units we are retiring be operational at 100% for a short period. In short we did what we could to make the unit operational, however minimal work was performed as as you said the unit is going to salvage.

[cutlow]

Great use of the Generator. Still waiting for part TWO!

[cloudstreets]

I have no need for a military surplus diesel generator, but this sure was a lot of fun to watch.

[Garagepinguin]

Man look at that gooseneck trailer just waiting to get finished

[lialbrown]

Clearly one of the most useful videos with probably the most informative comment section I've seen on yt. Congrats to your purchase and thank you for mentioning where you've got the knowledge to do all the electrical and mechanical works. Just awesome.

[keith_hudson]

You’re the man. Everything you do on here seems to always be done to the highest reasonable quality you are capable of. That’s a gift. Love it.

[merlepatterson]

Diesel economy will also go a lot further with a UPS/Hi-Cap Deep Cycle battery backup system in tandem. The diesel will run fully loaded until the batteries are at maximum charge, then it can be off-cycled until the batteries run down to say 30% and then re-started at full load until the cycle repeats. Plus, running a diesel at full loads is much better on the engine than partial or no load run time.

[DIYDaveT]

This was a very good intro to these mil surplus gennys. I bought the 813 (400Hz) version because my house in the Bahamas is off grid solar. I will downconvert the VAC to the correct range and then rectify and filter it and then feed it directly into a high voltage charge controller which is meant to connect to a 200-300VDC solar array. The beauty of these 400Hz models for my application is that the filters are smaller due to the higher frequency. Also, everyone thinks they are boat anchors so I paid $1000 for mine with about 1000 hrs on it, but no physical damage of any kind. Finally, if you import a 60Hz house generator into the Bahamas, expect to pay a whopping 40% duty. But a 400Hz generator is considered aircraft support and thus only 5% duty.

[markdavidson]

Great video. I went with a tri-fuel 14, 500 watt generator. I did my break-in on 93 octane gasoline and when we had Hurricane Beryl in Houston, I still used gasoline. I went to go get gas for day 2 and it was noticeably more difficult to find gas stations that either had power or still had gas. While more people use gasoline for their vehicles and generators, it would probably only take a few more days for diesel to run out if there is a major event and gas stations can't refuel their underground tanks. That's the reason why I went tri-fuel and had a plumber install a quick disconnect T-connection on my gas meter so that I could have "infinite" fuel.

[Rareparrot]

It really is Waldos :) Thanks video was fascinating....loved the diagnostics too !! We are so lucky here not to have freezing weather here in AUS (west)...