Champion 3500-Watt RV Ready Portable Generator with Wireless Remote Start (CARB)

†updated reviewTwo weeks after purchase the generator stopped working and will not turn on. My first two calls to customer support disconnected after thirty minutes on hold. My third call was a 20 minute wait but after an hour of fiddling no luck. Closest repair center is 100 miles away. Due to flooding from a week of rain it will be a few days before I can take it in.Extremely disappointed in the poor quality after less than 30 hours of non continuous run time. Because of rain our solar bank isn't charged. I'm disabled and can't run our heater and it's dipped into the 30s this week. It will be a full day of travel and $60 in gas to get to the service center once flooding dies down enough to get out. Hopefully they can fix it without a return trip.I need a reliable generator and this failed big time*********"We live off grid, currently in an RV while building two cabins, one for us and one for our adult son. The closest power pole is two miles away. We have limited solar as we won't install battery banks until under roof.We had a harbor freight large generator that was showing some wear. Since I am often here alone, we wanted a backup generator that could simply switch the RV plug.We have 25 wooded acres and wanted something lighter that we could move around in the back of a pickup or trailer on a four wheeler when we want power tools, or to pump water uphill from our springs.We went back and forth on buying a duplicate of the predator or a smaller generator. The predator is often overkill at this point, as we only need to run a microwave, convection toaster oven, chest freezer and AC or heat in the RV.When we saw the remote keyfob it made our choice easy. Often we need to charge batteries at night or in bad weather. Sometimes we just let the generator run out of gas because we don't want to go outside at 2 am or in bad weather.The generator arrived today, less than 24 hours after we ordered it. That's impressive because we're twenty miles from the nearest paved road. My son set it up in a few minutes and we turned it on just as a torrential downpour started.So far it's running everything we need. The water heater, microwave and air conditioning all ran simultaneously with no issue. It's much quieter than the larger generator. We could stand directly in front of it and hold a conversation easily.The control panel is very intuitive and is a nice upgrade over the predator. It's nice to have run hours listed in order to change oil on schedule.The instruction manual was very well designed. My son loved the wiring diagram. Also, the parts documentation was well laid out, with parts numbered sequentially in the same order they appear in the generator. It's a little thing that shows attention to detail. Our other manual grouped parts by category making it more time consuming to look up replacement parts.Altogether we are very happy with our purchase so far. Our usage is different than many other people. Once we are in the cabin, I can foresee keeping this chained to the pick-up bed for a myriad of chores. For now, it's a quieter, more fuel efficient, and convenient option than our larger generator.

This will be a two part review, as I just got this generator, it is my 2nd champion (the first is a 1500/1200 watt and runs perfect everytime) . UPS loaded directly on my pickup, so if there was shipping damage it was during their loading and unloading, however the box was fine and so was the generator as far as I can tell. My 2nd generator I got from home depot, it was only 199.00 on sale and was 4000/3300 watt and also runs perfectly. I use it to run a 10000 btu a/c, evap cooler, freezer and fan. I really only need it for the a/c but since it has the power I hook up the other things to save my solar batteries. Anyway, the 2nd genny is recoil only and has 2 120 volt outlets, I bought this unit since it is remote and electric also with a 30amp outlet, alos bought the power cord. The first two days ran flawless, loved it, then the 3rd day happened. It died after 30 minutes, checked the oil, was fine but changed it anyway, put in synthetic and tried again, after 40 min it died. I called Champion, spoke with Jim, he said float maybe stuck, he suggested to turn off fuel and run till it stops two times. I did, it ran for 30-40 min and died again but fuel came out of air cleaner, so I called and spoke to chris, he thought problem with carb and to take it in, problem is it is over 100 lbs and I am disabled. He suggested trying the fuel off trick again and try a little carb cleaner, well, I hooked my 2nd generator backed up and used that again, (I have two cabins which that one was going to be used for the smaller one) after a few hours of rest, I went back out and tried the genny again but this time put in carb cleaner and used the recoil, it worked??? ran it for two hours and shut it off, next morning turned it on again, ran for two hours an shut it off. I called champion back and spoke with Chris again, we talked for a while and finally figured out what may be the problem. I am at 6500 feet, these gennys only good till 4000 feet, Chris stated at my level is a loss of 1000 watts. So everything I was running was flooding it, espescially when compressors kicked on. So Chris is sending me new fuel jet kit, new AVR and even threw in new pull starts for my other genny, I was blown away by his customer service, he also said if I couldn't fix the genny by replacing the jet kit myself they would pay for it t be serviced, and if couldn't get it in my truck, they would send out a service guy, again, I am blown away. No, I am not happy about the extra hassle, but this kind of service makes up for it. Been a long time since a company went above and beyond. Just because of this, I will own champions for life. So, that is why right now it is 3 stars, when I get the parts in and everything squared away, I will submit another review, but I am pretty confident it will be 5 stars nonetheless, just want to make sure everything holds true. I just consider my self to be one of the unlucky few, but if this thing works right when all is said and done, this will be one of the best purchases I ever made, the remote start is awesome and even recoil is easy, and to move it with wheel kit, very easy, so don't let my experience stop anyone from buying, the experience so far isn't bad, just not going the way I hoped. There will be an update soon. UPDATE on 7/29/16, I received the new carb, installed it (champion put in a hi alt jet for me, which is easy, but hey, these guys are great). I have been running the genny for 12 hours a day and its flawless, installing the carb was very easy, I am not mechanically inclined so anyone can do this, takes about an hour.Anyway, this genny is powerful, kinda quiet (where I have it you can barely hear it) and runs steady ad uses little fuel. I am running aa large evap cooler, freezer, large fan and sometimes a microwave, flawless, love it. Also the fuel inlet is a bit odd, I bought a 4 dollar hi flow funnel....well worth it, trust me, now everything is perfect!!!! Thank you Chris and guys, I am a buyer for life!!!