Looking for some advice on a purchase i made

crazyshady · 26 July 2011 at 4:44PM

Back in April Lidl had a special offer on and i'm sure some of you saw it, they had a pretty good spec generator for sale at £169. I'm trying to get my snack van up on the road and was told i needed a fairly good generator because it needs to be able to handle all the power going into it, i was advised to go for this one and so i did. The first time i got it all seemed well, none of us are experts with generators so it took a while to figure out what to do but once we got it started it was ok. The van needed to be refurbished inside so there was no way to try it with everything in the van. Over the past 3 months there has been two occasions where i have got the generator out just to try it for things like lights and power tools since we were still working in the van and it's cutting out after a few minutes. We tried again just last week and the same thing has happened.

I don't know if it's because i am on a hill that maybe that is affecting the petrol inside or if there is a fault. It doesn't start right away. I'm not sure what is wrong. Then just yesterday another family member got another generator and this one is also meant to be a good one and from what i saw it started right away and i don't know much about power or voltages or how it all works but apparantly that is capable of running the things i need it to run in the van. The van is pretty much finished now so will be getting the equipment back in but i'm not sure what to do. It's been 3 months almost to the day since i got the generator so if anything is wrong i don't think i could take it back to Lidl. I don't know if i would need to try it on flat ground to see if that affects it in anyway and the booklet for the generator says there is a 3 year warranty with it and if there is any problems to contact them. It does say to send the item free of post to their address.........how i'm supposed to send it i'll never know and a copy of the sales reciept. Even if the other generator works that means i've spent £169 on something i can't even use. I don't even know if there is anything wrong with the generator but it just cuts out. I fill it with petrol and i'm getting 5 minutes if i'm lucky out of a hand drill. It just shouldn't do that.

molerat · 26 July 2011 at 4:58PM

I assume you are using the correct fuel, is it 2 stroke or 4 stroke ?. Try it on flat ground but a small slope should not make any difference. Contact the help line as there may be something you are doing wrong, leaving the choke out for instance. If it is faulty within the first 6 months it is assumed that the fault was there from day 1 and it is up to the retailer to prove otherwise. If it is faulty take it back for a refund.

crazyshady · 26 July 2011 at 5:54PM

It's 4 stroke it takes. We did have to read the manual at first and we had to get some kind of oil for it IIRC. Once we got that oil there was no problems at all baring in mind it was only 10 minutes or so just to try it and see if it worked, running different power tools, starting it up and it was fine and from what i've been told the fault shouldn't be with the oil, the oil should last a long time. After that we never used it again for weeks. That was a flat surface we tried it on but i thought since the van is on a hill that it might affect it somehow. It's just to try it with everything running so i can see if it can definately handle the different appliances that will be running from it. We wont need lights just now so it will be the fridge, the bain marie and the tea urn. I know a lot of vans use gas fridges and gas bain maries and urns that run off the gas but that's out of my price range just now. I suppose i could ask around and try and see if anyone uses generators to maybe have a look at it or see if i'm doing anything wrong with it. Anytime i put petrol in it i was putting £5 worth of petrol in it and i know that might not be a lot but it should still run a power tool for longer than 5 minutes.