The 650W yellow beastie found it's way into a car boot earlier this year. It just wasn't powerful enough to charge the house battery and was too smokey. Sold it for more than I bought it for too! Although, that doesn't count the cost of repairing it...
So. This time I opted for a new machine. Another ubiquitous Chinese jobbie, this time branded as a SIP Medusa T1101 from Toolstation (my new favourite source of DIY tomfoolery). This machine is a 4 stroke engine with a 1000W output claimed.
It's much easier to start than a 2 stroke engine and pretty much smoke-free, as it uses oil that circulates around the engine rather than putting the oil in the fuel and burning it.
Had to run it in by running the engine for a number of hours and then changing the oil. But it struggles to generate more than about 600W with the regulator getting into an oscillation that sees the frequency and voltage swing wildly before causing the engine to stall.
But it can work if the charger is gradually wound up to about 25 amps. Maybe as the engine beds in it will loosen up and support the load more easily.
The main problem is that the voltage waveform is very spiky. My little hand held scope describes a grim picture...
