[wdb]

I know folks here are big on Northern Tool and I don't mean to discourage that, just to offer a warning especially relating to large, complicated items such as lifts -- and generators. I bought a largish (7.5 - 9KW) generator from Northern Tool and have had a sadly long list of problems with it. The latest problem involved smoke pouring out of the generator end and no more volts. (This happened with no load on the generator, during my monthly start-and-run exercise.) Northern Tool reps have been helpful on the phone, but now that the stator or other electrical element has failed, I need to find a local outfit that will service it. In other words my inexpensive generator just got expensive. In truth, if I hadn't been able to fix all of the other little glitches myself, this thing would have gotten expensive a long time ago.

The generator was built in China; not bad in and of itself, but in working on this it as much as I have (despite only using it for emergency power) it is plain that quality control was not a priority during the assembly process.

Maybe I got a dud. But I won't be buying large items like this from Northern Tool anymore, not until I hear that their stuff exudes a higher level of quality. For me, for bigger ticket items especially, I just want it to work.