Generator silencer

I have made sure I have enough battery capacity to run the fridge for a weekend, as well as the lights and medical equipment I need. Then these get recharged while driving.

Cause I hate generators at night and luckily they don't allow then in QLD state forests.

Of course if you need to stay longer then the solar thing is a good idea but expensive to do properly. So my advice is to follow the lead of the guy in vnx205's post and try to minimise run time and never at night. This will require a battery.

Sorry no advice about silencing them. The only people I know who have one do what blknight has suggested.

Good Q as my genny is nearly as old as moi and for quite a few years it had no muffler at all.
Geez 5.5HP B&S's are loud :eek:
Now it has an old style cigar muffler back on it, so it's tamed the beast a bit, but it's still unbelievably loud compared to a Honda.

Re a muffler, any good OPE shop will have a catalogue with many variations and styles.
The ones used on Briggs are generally 3/4" pipe thread, Tecumseh's use 1/2" pipe.
There are over twenty mufflers listed in the Jak Max wholesale catalogue, and I'm guessing GA Spares and Bynorm would have bigger ranges again.

We use a Honda 2kVa, the EU style when staying at fishing camps for long periods of time. The camp will normally have 3 fridges and maybe a freezer. Not too many others about to annoy but the gennie gets annoying to us!
So I built a 20mm SHS frame with hard plywood base and then "clad" the frame with thinner ply and used some sound deadening foam inside. The lid is 2mm Al and the box has a door for the exhaust and door for the power leads.

The benefits are the gennie box is now square and much more packable in the ute, things can be put on top etc, and secondly besides the quiet the box makes the gennie weatherproof which comes in handy when camping in Nov - Dec.

Can take a piccie if you would like.


Steve

As hinted at in a couple of other posts, some of the noise from a motor comes from sources other than the exhaust. The cooling fins on an air cooled motor can work a bit like a tuning fork and amplify the mechanical noises the motor makes.

That is why a housing for the whole thing might be needed to get the noise down to an acceptable level.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vnx205

Someone had a fairly expensive generator some distance from his vehicle running a light. The light blinked briefly at one stage, but he didn't think much of it at the time.

When he went to turn off the generator some hours later, at the end of his long extension lead he found his big expensive generator had been replace by a little cheap one.

Of course it may be an urban myth.

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A guy I worked with a Leyland Truck and Bus was a very keen fisherman. He used to take the family down to Wooyung and camp in the dunes and go fishing for a week or more. He had a generator to run a chest freezer for the catch and the frig. and lights for the camp. He used to put it on a long lead away from the tent because of the noise. One night they were eating their fish and chips when the lights went out. He thought that he was sure he had refuelled the generator and set off into the bush torch and fuel can in hand to find only a three pin plug at the end of the lead. Someone had seen an opportunity.

There is nothing that peeves me more when camping than generators (except perhaps being forced to listen to someone else's taste in music), I don't go to the effort of travelling bush so that I can be deprived of peace and quiet to an extent that I would not tolerate at home. A good second battery and a 80w solar panel will prevent you ever having to inflict this antisocial device on others who are attempting to enjoy the peace and quiet of the bush. Those who say that their generator cannot be heard from more than a few metres away either have poor hearing or have never experienced silence.
On our last extended camping trip, I bought a Primus portable 80w solar charging system for $899, used it for 2 months and sold it on eBay for $860.