With much of the world self-isolating during the COVID outbreak, some folks are understandably getting cabin fever. My family and I try to reduce that as much as we can by getting outside in the fresh air on sunny days (sort of rare in RI now, during our rainy season; so lots more 40-50 degree days with grey skies). But of course, being a ham, I have no problem filling all those rainy days with radio activities.
Still sometimes I have to pay the piper on a sunny day. Today was spent changing the oil in my Honda Generator (EU2000i). I purchased that at the end of August 2011, just in time to lose power for about a week after Hurricane Irene smacked Rhode Island. Since then it has been used dozens of times for power outages and various Winter and Summer Field Day events.
The last time I changed the oil (bad Bob, bad), was in June of 2019, right before Field Day. So today was the oil change day, plus putting the snowblower away and getting the lawnmower ready for spring. Despite using the generator for less than 30 hours, the oil was fairly dirty as you can see in the photo below.
Please note the use of an accessory oil change tube (milled out of aluminum tubing) to keep oil from dribbling all over the inside of the generator when changing it. Also note the very low tech oil changing stand!
Changing the oil in a Honda EU2000i
