Damn-it Jenny!

Last newsletter, I briefly talked about my generator quitting all of a sudden. This generator has consumed all my mental energy today. It has no spark. It has air. As the engine turns over, you can feel air coming out the exhaust and out the spark plug hole, when the spark plug is removed. You can also smell gas coming out of those same holes. So it’s got air and gas, but no spark. With the spark plug removed but reinserted into the spark plug wire, and grounded to the engine case, confirmation; no spark. Also, it has a brand new spark plug.

After my wife and I have Googled everything generator problems related. We came up with a faulty low oil sensor as a common problem for generators. However there was no wire in sight coming from the engine, besides the spark plug wire, when viewed from the maintenance door. Where you’d check and change the oil, spark plug, air filter, or drain the carburetor. By the way, the oil level has been quadruple checked.

With the maintenance door on one side, to remove the panel on the opposite side, you have to remove the front and back black covers first. Removing the front cover requires you to remove the control panel and most of its electrical connectors, two fuel lines, and the choke cable. With all the panels removed, my wife and I see one small black wire coming out of the engine case, about half way up. It has a transparent green rubber insulated connector on it about half way down. My wife says there’s some liquid in the connector. I thought, she was talking about muffler bearing and blinker fluid, so I ignored her. Unable to quickly disconnect the connector, we followed the wire down to an electrical component. We both noticed a liquid pooling up on it as the epoxy formed a cup shaped recess around the edges and capacitors. I touched it, the liquid had a brownish color and no smell of fuel. Definitely oil. But where did it come from? Everything looked brand-new-clean. This generator is only three years old, with low hours from only being used to power the transfer switch at home when the power goes out and during track days to charge our electronics and power the tire warmers. We started feeling around things, no oil anywhere. Turns out, that my wife wasn’t speaking muffler bearing and blinker fluid gibberish. Once we disconnected that black wire coming out of the engine there was oil in the connector. But the wire looks and feels dry, what the hell?!

After researching the internet some more, we found out that this electrical component is the spark control module. Ah-ha, that’s why I have no spark. A forty-ish dollar part. And my track day is in a couple of days, maybe I can borrow Alan’s spare generator again?

After cleaning up the oil with brake cleaner and drying off the connectors with compressed air, I put the generator all back together. When it did not start, I wasn’t surprised. That black wire, which I later confirmed as the low oil sensor wire from the parts diagram, has two connectors. One at the midway point and one at the spark control module, both of which were filled with oil. The only way oil could pool up on just the spark control module is from the low oil sensor wire coming out of the engine, duh! I see it now, but what threw us off was the wire looked clean and dry.

So what’s the point in getting a new spark control module if it’s just going to pool up with oil again? And did that connector at the spark control module, which was soaked in oil, short out other electrical components down the line? There are eight wires coming out of it and the spark plug only needs one. My generator is a Generac iQ3500 and looks like a copy of the Honda EU3000IS, but at half the cost. Is the other half due to a better design (reliability)? Is oil electrically conductive? If I buy a spark control module, I need to fabricate a bracket so the wire is the low point, not the module. If I buy a spark control module and it still doesn’t work, somebody’s going to lose their temper! Which means somebody needs to do some better troubleshooting!!

Thank you to my sweetheart for all your help today. It amazes me that you know more about things that you don’t fully understand.