It’s going to be tough to beat a Nexgen. They are simple machines, no complex
electronics, I did remove the
water pump on mine and instead use a march 110V
pump, which is extremely reliable and can’t leak water into the
generator enclosure like anybody’s mechanical
pump can. It also needs no
service, ever as it has no rubber impeller to break apart etc.
The little
motor has surprisingly a ball bearing crankshaft, and the bottom end should therefore last essentially forever as long as it has
oil that gets changed every now and again.
It’s a wet sleeve
motor so top overhauls ought to be very simple, but the motor is so widely used and available, it may be inexpensive enough to just not bother to
overhaul.
It turns at an odd RPM, 2850 and through the pulley ratio, spins the
generator at 3600 RPM. It and it’s big brother the 5.5, have the same generator
head, so what limits the 3.5 output is engine HP, not the generator, which ought to make the generator last a long time as it’s never going to be operated at max output.
The capacitors are simple
HVAC capacitors and are widely available, I got a couple of spares off of Amazon, it seems they fail by slowly losing voltage over time, so when you notice your voltage is low, replace the cap. It’s mounted on the side with a clip, no tools required just pop it off and unplug the tow wires and put them onto the new cap, just short the cap before you touch it of course.
They supposedly do output a “Noisy” waveform, but I have not noticed anything with mine, they do use a different generator head now than when they were noisy, so maybe that is it.
They used to use a Markon generator, now a Syncro.
US made in
Jacksonville fl, or assembled actually as the engine is Japanese and the generator I think Spanish. However give them a call, Guy is nice to talk to and can help you with
parts or troubleshooting etc.
Mine is capable of about 28 amps continuously, it can hold 30, but the
power output is the same, when you load it down hard, the engine slows slightly and this drops voltage which increases amperage, but the total wattage is the same.
However it will happily make 25 amps at 120 VAC all day long, my typical load is usually about 15 amps or so.
It’s easy to adjust voltage by slightly changing the cap uf value, and Hz by adjusting RPM.