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2nd day running the generator, looks 'good' for tomorrow too

Melensdad

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
Well the hummm of the generator is making me crazy. I really really need to quite that thing down.

Big storms went through yesterday and knocked down power. They didn't say it was a tornado but 5 big mature oaks are laying across one of my neighbors driveways. I pulled the lawn furniture and several branches out of my pool. Another neighbor has a 6' privacy fence, that thing looks more like a picket fence as the panels blew out and scattered.

The power company says 5 transmission towers collapsed and it may be another 36 hours (or more) before we have power again.

I figured out a way to weld up a muffler to the generator, but it requires running the generator while I weld. Probably a really dumb thing. So I sit here listening to the exhaust drone away. The generator is pretty big, runs on natural gas so I don't have to keep filling the tank, but it sure is loud! Too bad its not big enough to run our air conditioner! At least we have the fans and the temps are in the 70's. Tomorrow its supposed to get up to 88-degrees and humid, not looking forward to that!
 
Sorry to hear this Bob.

Have you considered a small stand-by generator for the times you don't need the power to run everything? I bought a 3500w generator that's so quiet that you can stand next to it and talk to people without having to raise your voice.
 
Hope they get you hooked up before it gets cooking too bad. They are calling for major heat in the middle of the country this week. Even our forecast keeps getting temps raised from morning till evening. Would be good hay making weather if things were a little drier. Can you make a secondary muffler with some wire mesh and insulation inside a piece of duct pipe? Kind of like a resonator on the old cadillacs. Even 2 L pieces and a short length will take some of the noise away.
 
Or, pipe it into a hole you drill in the ground. The earth will absorb the "shock" of the exhaust and make it a lot quieter. Many have done such a thing with old generators with good results.
 
Went to the local auto parts store, picked up a few things, got it rigged up, not perfect, but better. I have a better idea . . . but that involves welding and without power I have no welder. Still, this seems to have helped. It dramatically changed the tone of the exhaust, still sort of loud but much more pleasant on the ears.
 

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Bummer on being without power but congrats on the redneck engineering . What ever works as far as I'm concerned . Makes me wonder why they dont put something more like that on when they build them , other then keeping everything compact . :smile:

From my understanding it takes a really big expensive generator to run much of an AC system other then like what are in the RV's . :unsure:
 
The plan for the future is to get another step-down pipe adapter.

Weld it onto the factory spark arrestor muffler that came with the generator so that the pipe that is welded on encloses the exhaust holes.

Then I will clamp the flex tube onto the extension that I just welded onto the spark arrestor muffler. That should really quite things down and I doubt there will be any real back pressure concerns given the pipe I'm using is literally double+ the diameter of the original exhaust tubing.

The final thing will be to get some exhaust pipe, have it bent as needed, and simply blow the exhaust outside through the wall.

OH, and I will gladly wear the REDNECK moniker as a badge of honor now that its quieter in the house!!!
 
Bob, I was in the Palos area yesterday when that storm hit. We were actually just leaving my grandmas and all we got was a hell of a lot of rain while driving.
 
it's too late for you Bob but in the military we would take a piece of flex pipe run it into a 55gallon drum than let it and screw an extention pipe off the 2 inch bung to let the gasses escape than we would cover the drum with dirt works real well also air cooled engines with out an acustic cabinent is going to be a bit loud the last series of generators we had were the tactical quiet series the infintry hated them because they were so quiet they had to use real navigation skills to find there way home
 
DaveNay said:
Bob, I was in the Palos area yesterday when that storm hit. We were actually just leaving my grandmas and all we got was a hell of a lot of rain while driving.
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Dave you missed a good one.

We had visibility of literally ZERO. Sky was as dark as midnight. Neighbor has 5 or 6 large mature oak trees laying over his driveway. I had to fish the lawn furniture out of the deep end of the pool along with some branches and lots of leaves. The pool cover is laying in the yard 30' away, stopped by the fence. One of my oak trees is tilted about 20 degrees off straight, but still in the ground. Some of the biggest hail I'd ever seen at the start of the storm but that was before things got really bad.
 
Melensdad said:
Dave you missed a good one.

We had visibility of literally ZERO. Sky was as dark as midnight. Neighbor has 5 or 6 large mature oak trees laying over his driveway. I had to fish the lawn furniture out of the deep end of the pool along with some branches and lots of leaves. The pool cover is laying in the yard 30' away, stopped by the fence. One of my oak trees is tilted about 20 degrees off straight, but still in the ground. Some of the biggest hail I'd ever seen at the start of the storm but that was before things got really bad.
Click to expand...

We got our fair share this year....a couple weeks ago we got 3.7" of rain in 45 minutes (as recorded at a nearby NWS monitoring station).
 
Would be real interested to see your final solution.

I have a 5500W construction type generator. It is LOUD too. Have been wondering about a way to add a better muffler, resonator, or something to it.

We use it when the power goes out. Also use it for digging in this Sierra foothill rock and hardpan; we have a Makita 42lb electric jackhammer with a couple different types of bits.

Melensdad said:
The plan for the future is to get another step-down pipe adapter.
Click to expand...
 
National Weather Service: No Tornado activity in NWI, but they did say we got hit with 110 MPH straight line winds. That explains a lot!


RNE228 said:
Would be real interested to see your final solution.
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I'll post it with photos. It is a whole new level of redneck genius.
 
well, I'd rather have it now then like when our power went out for 4 days after the ice storm this year. Had a few nights at 18 degrees.

We have a 17kw gen, I like the mufler thing. Did it chanfe how the motor ran?
 
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