I've had quite a few over the years. Early on I had a PTO generator. This worked well but I didn't like my tractor running full tilt unattended for many hours at a time. Tractors are not designed to run unattended and if something goes wrong it would most likely ruin a very expensive tractor.
I had a light plant. This had a Marathon pancake generator and a kubota D905 engine. Good engine, bad generator. These generators are designed for running lights and not much else. They are not regulated. I connected mine for 240v with neutral. If you loaded one 120v circuit it would go down and the other would go up. I reconnected for just 120v and it was ok for this. Wound up selling this. I actually called Marathon tech support at one point and the guy said these generators are just minimal and not very good for any type application other than lights.
I have a Miller diesel welder that was one of the worst things I ever bought. The thing about welders, especially Miller, they are trying to get the most HP out of a small engine. They generally have 2 pole generators and so run at 3600rpm. Mine was a mouse house and ruined inside because if it. I decided to rip all the electrics out of it and bought a generator head from Central Georgia Generator. Quite a looser of a project but sort of fun. This made about the best 6-7kw generator a person can find. Very nice package now, just a generator not a welder anymore.
In 2008 I bought a 25kva Wacker tow behind generator. This was a smoking deal at the time with 1500 hours or so. Wonderful machine! Runs for days on a tank of fuel, runs the whole house, very quiet. This has a 4 cyl isuzu engine. Since about 2015 or so these are ruined in my opinion since they are all common rail engines and probably not practical to maintain for an individual.
I just bought a Kohler 30kw standby generator. It's an ugly duck with the housing rust but it's only got 250hrs on it and has a Deere 4 cylinder naturally aspirated engine. Looks pretty promising. It starts right up, and has a big tank. Lots of these type takeout generators around with very low hours. Less desirable for lots of people since they are not portable.
If you can find a light plant with a good engine but otherwise clapped out I think buying one of the generator heads from central georgia generator and installing makes a nice setup.
Below is a picture of my frankenstein Miller generator. I installed two chicom digital voltage/current/frequency meters on it. It has a Kubota D1005 engine, Central Georgia Gen 8kw 1ph Gen Head. I put expanded metal over all the big holes to keep the varmints out this time. Seems like Miller could figure this out. I did quite a bit of testing when I finished this one and it regulates well and it'll do up to about 7kw. I know many people will say that's not much power at all but this thing really runs nice. It's got 2500 hours on the engine and will probably run for many thousand more if maintained. Not so for a gas generator.
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