I was building a ramp for Spirit to easily get it in/out of my apartment when my drill battery died, so while it charges up here is my best attempt at a product review…
Amazon Link – https://www.amazon.com/100-Watt-Gasoline-Tailgate-Inverter-Generator/dp/B00PALKNPG
Personally I love reading about tailgating gear. I spend a lot of time surfing the internet for tips, reviews, and must have suggestions from other schools longing for the day I have some extra money to burn. If you’re from another UC tailgating group reading this (I don’t think anyone reads these period) chances are you already have everything you need, but I would love to hear about what you use and what works/doesn’t. To start, I’m going right for my second favorite “Must Have” on game day: Our Homelite Generator.
If you have a Honda, feel free to stop. You won, it’s better/quieter/you sell some extra power to other tailgate groups and get a refund back from Duke Energy; I get it! If you can’t quite cough up the extra dough for a Honda, do I have an alternate for you! This baby has been keeping us powered for a whole straight year and it was a champ. Some groups know we deep fry french fries on gameday, and it’s all thanks to this generator. Typically we will run the deep fryer and crock pot together on this guy (Deep fryer is 1500W on it’s own) and it gets a bit loud but still keeps the juice flowing.
When the wattage is less than 1000, it’s very very quiet. You can easily forget it’s there and it was literally right behind us at Views on Vine. It is very fuel efficient too. Last year we were having 7-8 hour long tailgates and it made it all day running. When not cooking, it was powering a TV/Xbox360 and on that first tailgate when it was about 100 degrees we had a couple fans running. Quiet. Efficient. Powerful.
Not to say this guy doesn’t have a few cons…
-Price
I will list price because if you’re just starting a tailgating group a generator is a lot to spring for. I was very fortunate and got this while Home Depot was trying to clean house for $400, but as you can see on the amazon page these guys retail for about $600. It’s a lot, but if you’re in the market I still give it a thumbs up.
– Louder after 1000 Watts
Once we plug in the deep fryer (which we use for about an hour) the homesite gets a bit louder. It’s not nearly as loud as a non-inverter generator and I’m still impressed for the money, but it definitely picks up the volume. I’ll leave it to the other groups to prod me on game day if this is bothersome, but I’d imagine we’re okay.
-Frequent Oil Changes
So the manual says to change this every twenty hours, so I did about halfway through last season. I enjoyed all day tailgates last year from 8Am to 6pm (I loved to cook breakfast and watch the sun rise on a glorious Bearcat football filled day) so I felt that I had to change the oil pretty quick. I think I can go a bit longer now that it has non-stock oil in the tank, but I may not push it past 30 hours.
At the end of game day, this is definitely something that I love and would recommend to any group only needing to power an appliance or two and TV equipment + sound. It’s quiet, powerful, and fuel efficient! One of the best parts that cannot be understated, is it includes a free Skin-It, which means you can personalize like we did. If you’d like to learn more, find us on gameday and ask over a cheeseburger.
