Fixing Old Stuff

Coleman Powermate 5500.

Our old and reliable generator bought almost a quarter of a century ago, survivor and helper of many hurricanes back in the day was in need of work. I try to check on the thing at least once a year and when I did a couple of weeks ago, the pull cord just snapped off, old age probably being the cause.

And since I already seen videos of people starting generators with cordless drills, I tried to do the same. But the darn thing turned over but did not catch and after careful examination and obligatory Net searches, I reached the conclusion that the long-dreaded carburetor maintenance was finally here.

I was born and raise in an aspirated-engine world. I did off-road and managed never to had to be rescued because I had the tools and the basic knowledge to fix my vehicle and the same for in city issues with regular cars. But carburetors were black magic to me. I never felt confident to even attempt to take one off the manifold.

We are living in the great age of information and there are many good people making videos on fixing just about everything including changing the innards of a Tecumseh 11HP engine carburetor that runs the generator. So, my next step was to buy the repair kit which truthfully is inexpensive as heck, the blessing of old reliable stuff.

As I was checking the details and comment on this particular kit, I scroll down and on the section where other options are offered, I bumped into this:

Wait a gorramed minute. Is that all? From the videos I had seen, taking the old carb out and putting it back was the the easiest of operations: Two nuts, two screw, unclamping a hose and then reverse to reassemble. Of course I went with the full carb because I was investing the extra thirteen bucks in speed and ease of repair.

And I am not going to sit here and lie it was five minutes. It was about thirty because of me having issues with the gaskets (It kept falling off and I kept missing it which meant disassembly again and wiping the gas spilled all over the floor before trying to start the engine.

But now I have a fully functional generator working again. OK, almost, I need to get a new pull cord and that will be another cheap fix and upgrade.

Rather than the less-than comfortable T-handle, I am getting the ‘revolutionary’ design. And I just hope I have not misplaced the parts I removed so I don’t have to buy the whole darn thing. And no, there are no readily available battery starters for that engine. I could come up with a solution, but probably would be stupid expensive and not be reliable.

Same as I am finding with the parts for the 2007 pickup, parts are cheap and available and a lot of guidance to replace and fix stuff myself is available online. I suspect that it is the same for a lot of other things that were built prior to the need to inject stupid electronics to every operation to allegedly improve performance. I suspect that the real improvement is in the income of repair departments who are the ones with the equipment and knowledge to detect the sudden reason why your Wi-Fi enabled refrigerator is no longer cooling, connects to PornHub at the same time cascading ice cubes out of control at 3 AM.

Now, if the same could be applied to old farts, we would be in much better shape and almost functional.