Generator

We have the generator.

Finally.

But therein lies a tale.

We picked it up on Friday morning and managed to get it home, borrowing some ramps to put it in and out of the car. It weighs 248 pounds. Then we put in the oil and hooked up the battery and spark plug. Then one pull on the starter cord….. and…….

and the cord came out but would not rewind.

Broken.

On the first pull.

I said a few works like, “Darn” and “Shucks” and “Rats” and things like that. One good thing about a generator is that you can’t really throw it across the room like you can some appliances that break just as you get them out of the box. I tried, but I am 5′ 6″ tall and weigh 150 pounds soaking wet…. 100 pounds shy of The Beast.

So we called up Sears, and the kid on the other end of the phone said that it should still be under warranty. I said, “Ya think? I just picked it up this morning!”

The kid on the other end of the phone said we needed to bring it back for warranty work, so we borrowed their ramps again and we took it back and left it for the store manager to look at on Saturday.

Saturday, we went back to see what was up, and the manager told us that the recoil starter had obviously been damaged, repainted, and then installed in the generator again at the factory. We both wondered out loud why Briggs & Stratton would even consider doing something that stupid.

But I guess stupid things get done sometimes.

The manager swapped the broken recoil starter for the one on the floor sample of the same generator and sent us home. With the new starter, we had the generator running after a few pulls on the cord. Here is the The Beast:

I think it was running when I took that photo. Listen. Pretty quiet, huh?

(Actually it is fairly loud, but if we ever really need it, that noise will alert the neighborhood to how brilliant we were way back in ’11 when we picked up a generator on a bright, sunny day.)