Generators
 

Has anyone got one of those 900 watt 2 smoke generators? They are going for about £40 on ebay at the moment but are they as crap as the price suggests? They appear to be rated at 650 watts continious so two of them should run my tyre warmers?? Just cant afford a 2kw 4 stroke one at the moment.

I think you already answered your own question. You'll struggle to run a set of tyre warmers on 650 Watts. You'll need about 1200 W minimum.

Paul, JTF in Hucknal have some 1600kw diesel generators at the moment, I think they were about £80

Yeti, that's a steal! How noisy are they? Have you got any contact details?

My thinking was i can get two of them for less than a four stroke one will cost. My warmers are 600 watts each you see with separate plugs.

Oooo, john that sounds interesting. trouble is the 900 watt ones are only rated at 650 continious so 1600 will be less than that continious i suppose. Worth looking into though.

Paul, my mate Dallas has just got one of the 700W 2-stroke ones from B&Q he used it to run his tyre warmers at our Llandow trackday yesterday and as it was a fairly hot day it did a reasonable job, although next weekend at Castle combe where he is racing in the powerbike race it will be used for just one tyre warmer with his 650W 4-stroke one running the other warmer. When it comes to lighting the pit area in the evening then he just fires up the 4-stroke one as it is very quiet. Also haing two small ones makes transporting them in the van easier and are very easy to load and unload without any help unlike my old 1500W one which was a real struggle by myself.

If you want a genny, get yourself a honda powerd one or diesel engined.
Some of the alternators fitted to these gennys are crap. Six months and they are dead. Just do a search on ebay for honds gennys. Pedro picked up a cracker 2.2kva for £150, never been use.

[Edited on 28-5-2005 by Jon]

How does KVA translate into KW?

Cheers Kev. So he had both warmers running off one genny and it survived? Hmm, i suppose they didnt get too hot though but at least it didnt kill the genny.

I don't know the exact translation, but I have a 2.2kw which is approx 2.7kva

kVA = kilo volt amps
kW = kilo watts

1kVA=0.8kW
or
1kW=1.25kVA