Right after the Cuban missle crisis, the Civil Defense chartered the building of "community bomb shelters". The locals had to raise the money for the construction and infrastructure. CD stocked them, gave training, coordinated drills, etc.
We had one in DeLeon Springs (Fl) that was finished in 1962. That year, CD put a spankin' new Dayton 3.5KW genset in the below-ground shelter, and locked the doors.
In 1974, my dad and I were hired to clean out all government-owned items, "de-mil" them, and weld the doors shut on the abandoned concrete tomb. We pulled out the old genny, which had been sitting on wet concrete for 12 years. It was a fur ball of rust, but what the hey... it still looked like some good iron.
It sat in a (dry) warehouse until 1988, when I dragged it out and began a tear-down. After getting the whole thing down to nuts, it was apparent that really nothing was wrong except the magneto coil was shorted and the carburetor bowl and venturi area was corroded to ruin.
The old 10HP cast iron updraft Briggs still had compression. The genny slip rings were corroded, but we polished them. A replacement pull-off carb and an automotive style coil got the thing running after only about a day of work, in toto. (the genny has a 12vdc battery charger output, so that runs the coil after it's started)
Every summer, I fire it up, just to make sure. We have storms here. I always only plug in about the maximum load I expect to run -- in my case one half-horse water pump and about 1000watts of incandescent lights. And it always pulls the load.
This spring, I "decommissioned" our old central AC, and saved a few components; relays, caps, etc. For whatever reason, I also saved the heat-strip insert -- a 230V, 4800watt resistance heater.
Last night, I fired up the genny for a warmup, because the remants of Ernesto were headed for us. This time, I plugged the heat strips in for a test load. My expectation was that the field would quench, but I wanted to see, anyway.
Damned if the 44 year old Dayton didn't just lean into that load like a mule to a plow! It RAN the coil, and the output only dropped to about 205v! Daggone! It's just a 3500 watt unit!
Let's see one of the new "peak rated" gennies do THAT!
I LOVE old iron!
LLoyd