Periodic Maintenance; Engine Oil - Honda EU 2000i Maintenance Manual

Periodic Maintenance

The basic care involves maintaining the proper oil level, changing the oil after ten to
twenty hours of break-in and every 100 hours of operating time after that, cleaning the
air filter, cleaning the spark arrestor, and cleaning and gapping the spark plug.
Figure 2 below is the Honda recommended maintenance schedule (copied from the
Owner's manual). Refer to the Owner's Manual for details and notes. Changing engine
oil is inexpensive 'health insurance', therefore change it frequently. Also, use high
quality oil. On the other hand, if the generator was used much less than 200 a year, no
point changing the spark plug every year.
Figure 2 Maintenance Schedule

Engine Oil

High-quality oil is 'inexpensive insurance' for long engine life. The Honda manual
recommends 10W-30 weight (for our temperature) conventional mineral engine oil.
Synthetic oil is very high quality and an improvement over conventional oil. While it's
nearly four times as expensive as conventional oil, you will be buying and using only
small quantities at a time. According to the car-care guru Leon Kaplan (KABC radio,
Sunday mornings at 9 AM), synthetic oil should not be used on a brand new engine
unless specifically recommended by the engine manufacturer. If you elect to use
synthetic oil, run the engine with the Honda-recommended conventional oil to allow the
engine components to 'set' before switching to the synthetic. I switched to synthetic
(Mobil 1, 10W – 30) after approximately 100 hours of use. The issue of mixing mineral
oil with synthetic is debated by experts (I am not one of them). Be safe and smart, do
not mix; use one or the other.
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