We are back inside the cone of uncertainty. If the 11 pm advisory does not improve, hurricane panels start to come off hibernation tomorrow. My propane is topped and I just need gas for the generator and give it a test run.
And prayer. It can’t hurt. I won’t be happy till the eye is past 27 latitude on a northerly motion
It won’t help you this time around, but have you considered a propane-fueled generator? Home Despot has a Ryobi generator rated at 700 Watts continuous that accepts both 1-pound disposable tanks and, with an included adapter, 20-pound refillable tanks. Of course, there are plenty of larger options available as well.
The advantage of propane is that it doesn’t go stale the way gasoline does.
I had looked into changing the carb to take gasoline and propane. But propane simply will not give you the same output as gasoline and thus less power generated.
Cleaning the generator motor is not a big deal. Empty the tank as much as you can, run it till it stops, let it cool, change oil and you are done.
As for the gas, it goes in the cars after we are done with the hurricane.
FWIW, NASA is moving some of the big hardware, like the old launch umbilical towers, into a safe space – the VAB. The crawler that lifts them only goes about 1 mph when loaded so it takes a couple of days to move the hardware around. OTOH, the crawler weighs like 6 million pounds and is very low profile. It’s not getting picked up and thrown by the winds.
It’s hard to imagine hardware designed to survive a Saturn 5 blowing up on it would get hurt by a cat 5 storm. It’s their storm preps.