A while back I purchased a little 900 watt generator from Harbor Freight. It was on sale for a hundred bucks. I thought I could use it camping. It had a two cycle engine so I thought it could double as a mosquito fogger as well as making power for the campsite.
So when we started building, I got it out of the box to use to power small electric power tools at the job site. It does pretty good. It will run a small cutoff saw, drills, skill-saws and the like. It WILL NOT run a small air compressor though.
It ran fine for a week and then the pull rope for the recoil starter started to not engage when starting. Not long afterward, while running, it came to an abrupt halt as in it stopped and the pull rope wouldn’t pull.
Back at the house I removed the recoil starter from the unit and found:
The starter clutch was made of plastic and broke. You would not think there is much of a price differential between molded plastic and a metal stamping but there must be. The same guy that designed this probably designed the Chevy Ignition Switch.
Well, I found a plethora of replacements on eBay and I bought two. If I bought one, it would break. If I buy two, it will never break and I will always have a spare.