I was out camping a week ago, and decided it was high time to purchase a portable generator - so I high-tailed it off the mountain and went to Home Depot. I found a Coleman Powermate 6250W for $499. It works well, but it's about 300dB. I've thought about mounting it to my 4-wheeler trailer and building an acoustic enclosure around it (i.e., make a plywood box around it with access doors and inlet / outlet vents, and mounting muffin fans for air movement through the vents).

Any suggestions from my fellow campers/ATVers?[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

 

Anyone?...Buehler, Buehler....Anyone?...Buehler.....

 

custom exhaust

like the ones the hunters use on their utes,,,to make them silent

 

I have found that the exhaust that came with the generator is about as quiet as its gonna get....a lot of the noise is from everything else, not the exhaust....soundproofing does work, but it s a pain if you have to move it....at my camp i don't have to move it, so it is enclosed in a block surround on 3 sides with insulation with the proper ventelation ...just provide vents for the intake and exhaust, make sure they are sufficient in size....

 

I pull my ATV trailer behind my 5th wheel, so moving it won't be too big of a deal. I thought I could make the enclosure pretty stout and put a couple of access doors on it so I could do maintenance, etc. I have been looking for a muffler, but can't seem to find anything.

 

I have 2 buddies that tried to quiet theres down, didn't seem to help as far as overall noise, maybe somebody has the hot idea somewhere

 

If you didn't buy it that long ago, take it back and tell them it didn't work and you don't like it. If you can't do that, try to sell it.

Honda is the only way to go, those are way quiet. What size do you need? I use a Honda 650 watt and a Honda 1000 watt. Those are way quiet. I also built a wood box, put a vent and a hole on side for the cords. The sound completely disappeared and you can't even tell it's running. I hate when I forget it's running and let it run all night until it runs out of gas [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img][img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]. Did that only once.

Good Luck

 

About the only way to get a quiet one is to get a small one. I only need 2500W so went a little bigger and noise isn't that bad. Hardest thing I found was trying to find a medium sized that ran for over 8 hours.

 

The Honda EU-3000 is VERY quiet, at 54db, it is one of the quietest portables on the market. Unfortunately, it is about $1700.

 

Yeah, that's what sucks!![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img] I guess you get what you pay for.