This morning both of the generators started misbehaving. One genny got grumpy yesterday and refused to run for more than fifteen seconds before cutting out. We changed it for the second genny which after a couple pulls on the starter rope burst into life and ran all day and right up to about half past eleven last night with not a problem. Meantime, I stripped the first genny’s carburettor down to see if there was any obvious dirt around. No dirt so I put it all back together and tried it again. Same result, it ran for fifteen seconds and then died. I repeated this cleaning process a few more times before giving up on it for the day. I went out this morning and tried to get the second genny going and it did the same as the first genny, ran for fifteen seconds and then died. With both gennys out I became really concerned ,and as I did not have access to compressed air with which to blow the carburettor jets out ,I called Philip down in Santa Peter for help. By this time I suspected that we had been filling the petrol tanks with dirty petrol.
After the telephone call we took both the gennys down to Philip. When we took them out of the car genny two burst into life happily as though it always did ,but genny one still would not run. After a lot of poking about Philip took the carburettor off genny one and into his workshop and blew the jets out. After
re-assembly once more it would still only run for fifteen seconds. Whilst we were all stood scratching our chins, Philip asked if I had filled them with oil recently (being four stroke engines they have oil sumps just like a car). I changed the oil on both gennys a few weeks back and replaced the oil with the recommended quality and amount according to the Spanish manual. Philip got some more oil and put no more than a cup full into genny one and bingo the damned thing burst into life and kept going. Both gennys have an oil warning light on them, so one would have assumed that the oil was OK. We returned home and number one genny has been running all day. I ran number two genny for a while after topping it’s oil up.
Who would have suspected such an outcome except a proper motor mechanic with a lifetimes experience in these things? I learned a very good lesson for the future and was greatly relieved to have both gennys working properly again. When I asked Philip how much he wanted for his valuable time he said €5. Now is that good value or what?
We went dancing tonight again and started on the tango (I think).
More pictures from our trip yesterday and including a olive press scrap yard that we found and one of the sunset through the bottom of a wine glass (what better way to see a sunset?) If we start to show pictures of the sunrise through the bottom of a wine glass then we‘ve hit big problems).