Friend of mine has a 2021 Generac with 65 hours.
It failed during Hurricane Beryl.
He had quarterly maintenance plan maintaining the machine.

Apparently Generac sourced brushes & stator from China and there was a quality of work / design issues leading to premature brush failure.

Bad alignment resulting in brush degradation.
You could pull panels and see carbon dusting inside the generator.

Generac knew about this failure mode but chose not to inform the owner, inspect, or act pre-emptively.
They are replacing stator & brushes under warranty.

Anybody have any more facts or anecdotes on this issue?

Should be under the 5 year standard warranty

Yes, two different neighbors had the alternator go out on their generac during the Beryl outage. One of them had the new one go out also. Both were the large water cooled generators. Both were able to get new generators and belts thru a service tech. And once from the superstore in Tomball.

Wondering if there could be an alignment issue with idler pulley or other contributing problem or maybe bad alternators.

There were 2-3 Generac's in our neighborhood that had the same issue during Beryl as well!

makes sense. know of at least 3 people who had generac that failed to start up last week. one of them had a 70kW unit that i can only imagine the cost.

Found more facts on the issue.

Generac 5000 series model numbers such as 0052830 made in the 2021 time frame have misaligned brushes.

Need to have brushes replaced and alignment washer installed while under warranty. Commutator ring will need cleaning from the carbon fouling.

Doing nothing almost guaranteed to result in early failure.

Our 22 KW Generac had this failure during Hurricane Milton. The tech who fixed it called us at the end of the day and said he had 63 Generacs that died during the hurricane for the same reason. 63 In one night in one small area for same exact part. I'd say that's a defect and I'm sure Generac is aware.

Animal Eight 84 said:

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Friend of mine has a 2021 Generac with 65 hours.
It failed during Hurricane Beryl.
He had quarterly maintenance plan maintaining the machine.

Apparently Generac sourced brushes & stator from China and there was a quality of work / design issues leading to premature brush failure.

Bad alignment resulting in brush degradation.
You could pull panels and see carbon dusting inside the generator.

Generac knew about this failure mode but chose not to inform the owner, inspect, or act pre-emptively.
They are replacing stator & brushes under warranty.

Anybody have any more facts or anecdotes on this issue?

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I just switched maintenance companies and they mentioned this exact issue.

2 neighbors across the street with generator issues during Beryl, I believe both generacs. I have been seeing generator maintenance trucks around the neighborhood… all after Beryl

Starting to see people buying more Cummins Home Generators cause of all the issues with Generac

Company that used to service our generator declined to renew our service contract because they are moving to Briggs & Stratton from Generac.

Yes, my sister lives in Brazoria county and they have a Generac. It failed on the fifth day of Beryl, fortunately, a few hours before power was restored.

She called an electrician who told her if she had bought the unit since about 2020, that the brushes were crappy, and this was a very common failure. And it turns out her warranty covers parts only, not labor, and last I heard they were not returning her call.

This is very poor customer service by Generac. If there is a known issue that causes a failure to run they should have issued a service letter to fully replace the parts at zero cost to the customer. A good way to lose customer goodwill.