Jump Starting the Champion 3400-Watt Dual Fuel Generator - How Often to Run to Keep Battery Charged? (2023)

Introduction

In this video I show how to jump start the Champion 3400-Watt Duel Fuel Generator.
Since the motor finished breaking in (5 hours of run-time), I have been running it once a month to keep the battery charged. For just over a year, that was enough until this month when the generator wouldn't start!
So how often do you need to run it to keep the battery charged? Watch this video and find out.

Link to the generator:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FAWMMEY/

-------------------
Link to my Etsy Store:
www.etsy.com/shop/BetaCygniDesigns

-------------------
End Screen Video Acknowledgement: Cosmic Reef Video produced by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/2020/16/1277-Video

Content

All right, we got a brand new canister, and we can't get the generator to uh fire up.

I think the battery might be weak or something so we'll, try it again, put the regulator on open the valve turn the battery on and see it's, not cranking so I'm, not trying to jump the battery.

So I've got this battery charge here.

It also will do a uh, a start, you know, it'll start a car.

So it should be powerful enough to start this thing.

So we'll have to take the back take the panel off the back and get access to the battery and try to jump it.

All right.

The battery compartment's over here.

We've got this, uh battery, charger and also we'll start.

This will start a car.

So it should be able to start this generator.

We just need to open up this panel.

Remember this happened once before, I think I left the battery on that was it and not to go back and check it.

But I think what I did was I took the battery out and charged it with this thing, recharge it.

And then put it back in hopefully we'll have to go to that length today.

It does have some energy I'm, hoping once a month for 20 minutes, I'll be running it once a month for 20 minutes, just to keep the keep the engine lubricated in the battery charge, but maybe that's not enough.

You may have to do it every two weeks, because you haven't really been using it because there's been any any uh power shut off from pg e because of fire danger.

Luckily, so here's the battery and then that's, why this has got some kind of a little there you release this rubber holder.

Then the battery will come out.

Oh, I just connected the gas and moved it away as a precaution as I'm working with electricity.

I want to mix those two things all right so see, if we can, you can't get access to the battery terminal.

So you should be able to jump it all right let's open this up.

So I'll, go ahead and plug this in and then we'll hook it up before I charge.

I decided I better, uh, check the battery that would be a good idea.

So this is a 12 volt battery check.

You just connect this to the black.

And then you can touch the red showing 12 volts, but you know, it's supposed to be 12 and a half volts.

So it's a little bit down.

I think I think I'm going to have to run it.

Every two weeks that'll be this ultimate solution here.

But let's see if we can get it jumped so I'm going to put these on so black to black and red to red pretty straight forward as you put the red on first it's, always seen backwards to me, but that's the way you're supposed to do it.

I don't really have a uh ground on the motor that's handy that I know about anyway.

So I'm going to put it on the terminal usually it's better to put if you're jumping a car battery, the car you want to put it on, uh somewhere on the engine.

As opposed to on the batteries, a slight risk of of uh battery, exploding sort of okay.

So we'll plug this in.

And then we'll turn it on and see what we can do look at this.

It looks like it's, pretty well charged up it's close to 100 percent charged, but we'll we'll leave this on for a minute.

And then we'll start.

This has a 55 amp, uh, start setting.

But I don't really want to I don't want to put 55 amps in this thing.

So you'll also do six volt batteries.

But this is a 12 volt battery.

So uh, we'll, try putting it on the 10.

I'm gonna leave it on the two and see if it'll start with two now, go ahead and hit the gas up.

And then we'll see if it'll start with just a two amp boost to the battery all right? So we got the uh 2, amp boost going on the battery.

We got the gas on turn this on see if it'll start all right started so we'll, turn off the uh we'll, turn off the uh battery, charger and uh, just let's let it run for 20 minutes.

Sorry.

I turned off the battery unplug, the battery charger.

Now, you always remove the black first, and then the red I'll just leave the battery out here until it's done with this 20 minutes and we'll see if it'll start up right away afterwards, then we'll put put it back together.

All right it's been running 20 minutes, we're going to shut off the gas, which will shut off the engine.

We'll turn off the battery for a second we'll, just let it sit for a second, and then we'll try restarting it and see if the battery has enough juice to restart, it all right it's been sitting for a minute so we're going to turn the battery back on.

And I don't think I mentioned before, but uh, it'll start on the first try.

If you pull the choke out on on natural gas on propane, alright.

So we'll, see if it starts if it does we'll button, it up and try again in two weeks, all right, let's, turn the gas off right? All right? Doesn't have enough charge so I'm going to, uh, put the battery on trickle charge, and let it charge up for a few hours and then I'll hook it back up and try it again.

We have to replace the battery that's possible.

All right.

So this battery charger has a automatic mode, where it'll send two amps to the battery.

And then when it gets to 100 charge it'll shut off automatically that's, what we want.

So you always want this doesn't have an on off switch.

So you always want to hook up the uh battery connections.

First then plug it, at least I like to then there's, no, sparking so put that red on red black on black I'll, go plug it in and then we'll take a look at it.

I showed you this before, but okay.

So here you see it's down now, it's, not 100 anymore.

So it did use some energy trying to start the engine.

So we'll, just let it run, uh for a few hours and see if it gets 100 percent, and then, uh, try starting it again, all right it's been charging for about six hours.

This should be enough it's, only a 7 amp hour battery and we're charging at 2 amps.

So this is not quite at 100 percent actually it's hard to tell exactly it's still going in at about a little bit less than 2 amps.

So we'll, see what happens it could be.

This battery is, uh kapoot.

It is about 22 months old, which is not not a super long time for this kind of battery, but we'll just see what happens.

We will turn on un.

Unplug, the battery charger disconnect, these terminals and try firing it up again and see if it'll fire the generator all right gas is hooked up turned on turn on the battery.

Try to start it and pull the choke out all right.

It's charged up started the I guess this was already.

So if I pull the choke out, it starts on the first time.

Sometimes I if I don't pull the choke, I have to hit it twice to get it started so choke with propane is kind of, uh, inconsistent let's say, all right so we'll, turn off the gas.

All right.

We just charged the battery with a battery charger, so it should be fully charged.

We went, you know, we started up the engine.

Well, see now that took a bunch of energy out of the battery, uh, let's, see, I think what we'll do is we'll just try it in a couple weeks and see if it's, uh, I can start to start the engine.

If you can't I'll charge it up and then run the battery for 20 minutes, run the generator for 20 minutes and a couple weeks and we'll see if that that'll keep it charged.

If we do it every two weeks so we'll do that for we'll see? What happens in two weeks is what I'm really saying, one more thing I'm gonna do I'm gonna trick you use the battery checker, yeah, see now it's showing 13 volts.

So the battery is still charged if it can hold its charge for two weeks.

Then it should work.

So we'll, try again in two weeks, if it starts up, then we'll just assume this battery's.

Okay, we need to run the generator.

Every two weeks that's, my conclusion, okay, it's been a couple weeks since uh, jump started and charged the battery and ran the generator for 20 minutes.

So we're going to see if the battery has held its charge for two weeks, because it seemed like it was starting at uh, if I was running it once a month, but it wasn't starting, and then then last month, it didn't do it.

So I think we need to run this every two weeks we're going to test that now see if it'll start up now every two weeks after two weeks, then we'll, go ahead and start charging it start running it.

Every two weeks in about once a month, turn the battery on pull the choke out, try to start it all right.

So I'll, just turn it off.

Talk better all right? Remember, there's, no off button.

You have to just just turn the gas off.

So two weeks, uh, it held this charge.

So that means we're going to run it.

Every two weeks hit it once a month.

So that's, the final answer and battery's, still good.

It just just needs to be charged every two weeks.

If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up post, a comment, if you have any questions or ideas and I'll, try to respond that's all for now, but more videos are coming.

And if you want to see them, please subscribe to my channel and turn on the notification icon.

If you don't want to miss one, this is beta cygni signing out and keep looking up.