let us know how it works out????
That is interesting.
Thank you for posting about this.
We bought a pair of the Northern Tool Powerhouse 2300I suitcase generators that are Honda knockoffs. Really quiet and our electronics run great on them. Fortunately, we’ve only had to use them once.
Haven’t had a chance to compare them to Honda yet for quietness but bet it’s close.
I've watched a ton of videos on generator testing, about every combo you can imagine. The Champion's are pretty close but in every instance I've seen the Honda is a little quieter. Generacs are louder than most. And the equivalent Predator seems to be the loudest of them all from what I've gathered.
It all depends on what your use case is I guess, If you run them hard and put them up wet where they aren't going to last or are using them in areas that they may get stolen, then the cheapies make some sense. Same if you just don't use them much and keep them prepped and ready to go when needed.
If your power requirements are pretty strict the Honda wins in clean power, but I'm not too sure that it's as important today as it used to be and other inverters aren't terrible, but the Honda still kicks butt here. During the tornado outage in Moore I was forced to run my quite expensive Samsung flat screen TV, and my computer for a bit on my 5500W non-inverter generator. Also charged some neighbors cell phones and didn't have any issues. I was nervous about that, That's when I went and picked up the little Honda. I was also worried about blowing the board in my refrigerator but it made it through. It was reassuring to be able to run my gas furnace on it though during the freezmageddon, I didn't have to worry about blowing the board in the unit or the thermostat controller. It's pretty easy to justify the $700 on it when replacing those items would probably cost a lot more.
I'm probably going to buy another 1000i and run the two in parallel or just sell it and get a 2200i to run my outbuilding that's going to be my "reloading room" pretty quick. That's much easier than running another line and my panel is out of places to add breakers anyway. LED strip lights, a bullet & case feeder plus a real small AC unit at times should be doable. It has to be quiet enough to not bother the neighbors too much and I don't want to have to hump fuel back there every other day either. I do have the gas meter just right beside where it'll be so that's being considered too. Harbor Freight ran a dual fuel Predator on a helluva sale a couple months ago. I was seriously tempted...
Cheap generator with VFD on pump FTW.
i haven't needed a vfd with any of the harbor freight gens.
I guess it depends on how big of a pump you were trying to start. Getting rid of inrush and improving power factor will greatly increase the size of motor you can start.
yes sir that is correct. the regular preditor gens i have will start most motors without tripping out. the honda inverter gen of considerable sized larger wouldn't start the same or lessor motor but it did run quiet and used less gas. i haven't tried the HF inverter gens but i wouldn't expect them to be any different than the honda.
