I discovered back in early May that my generator was no longer working. I didn’t think too much about it over the summer since the funds to have someone look at it just weren’t there. I was bitterly disappointed to not have it for my trip south, but figured that any money I sank into it would be greater than the cost of the occasional night at a campground.

One of my colleagues at the park is an electrical engineer and I finally worked up the nerve to ask him to have a look at for me. He came to the same conclusion as I did (!), that the problem was in the area of the brushes, which needed to be cleaned out.

Taking out an onboard generator is a huge undertaking, so I began to explore the idea of having it removed for salvage and buying a small portable generator. But the low number of hours on the Kohler made me unhappy about this option.

A few people told me to ‘whack’ the motor compartment, but I thought they were joking until my colleague suggested the same thing! He told me to hold down the start switch and give the motor a good whack with a heavy hammer.

I had nothing to lose by this point, so I did as he instructed. Nothing. I released the start switch, repositioned the hammer, hit the start switch and… the motor turned over!

The genset still won’t start, but my colleague claims that it’s ‘fixed’; all that’s needed now is to get some fresh fuel to the carburator.  I might need to take it apart and clean it as well as blow out the fuel line, but those are easy things to do.

To be continued…