GeneratorFixIt exists for one reason: a generator that won’t start during an outage is a solvable problem, and you shouldn’t have to pay a $300 service call to fix what is usually a $15 part or a 20-minute job.
Who’s behind this site
- 39 years of hands-on mechanical repair experience
- 19 years U.S. Air Force F-16 fuel systems technician (Technical Sergeant, E-6)
- Multiple deployments to active war zones — hazmat responder to hydrazine spills
- 9 years commercial food service equipment repair (motors, controls, electrical)
- Founder of RemoveAndReplace.com — a 30-year-old home repair authority site with 1,400+ articles
Why I’m qualified to write about generators
A portable generator is a small engine bolted to an alternator. A home standby is that, plus the transfer logic and electrical controls I’ve been troubleshooting my entire working life. These are my machines.
For 19 years I served in the U.S. Air Force as an F-16 fuel systems technician. If you want someone who understands fuel delivery, ignition, contamination, and what happens when a small engine has to start right now with no second chances, that’s the exact background I bring. Carbs, fuel pumps, fuel lines, stale-fuel diagnosis, water-in-fuel, ignition troubleshooting — that’s not Internet research for me. I did it for nearly two decades on machines worth tens of millions of dollars where a fueling mistake could kill a pilot.
After the service I spent 9 years repairing commercial food service equipment — the motors, capacitors, control boards, and electrical systems behind the scenes at supermarket delis, meat departments, and bakeries. That’s the direct authority behind every AVR, capacitor, stator, and no-output diagnosis on this site.
How this site is written
Every guide on GeneratorFixIt is built to do one thing: get you from a symptom to a fix, in plain language, in the right order — cheapest and most common causes first, before the expensive ones. No filler, no scary upsell, no fake urgency. If a $5 spark plug is going to solve your problem, I’ll tell you that before I mention a $200 AVR.
I write the articles myself, based on real experience with the systems involved. Where a brand-specific spec or part number is needed, it gets verified before it goes on the page.
The business
GeneratorFixIt is operated by Patriot Supply Services LLC in Peoria, Arizona. Some of the part recommendations on this site are affiliate links — see the Disclaimer & Affiliate Disclosure for details. The links never change which parts I recommend; the recommendations are based on what actually solves the problem.
If there’s a generator problem this site doesn’t cover, tell me on the Contact page — that’s how the troubleshooting library grows.
— Keith Schneerer