Replacing Harbor Freight Generator Head Gasket With Homemade One

My little Harbor Freight 800 watt generator blew a head gasket. A head bolt came loose and burnt through the head gasket. The engine was running poorly. I finally decided to make my own head gasket and get my generator running well again.

I got a huge flat sheet of head gasket material at NAPA Auto for only about $14 a while back for this job. I finally got around to fixing my little generator.

It is a very simple task which only took me about an hour or so. I pulled off the spark plug wire first. Next I took off the two screws holding on the plastic shroud.

Then it was a simple four bolts to remove the generator engine head.

The head gasket was clearly burnt through and the cylinder and head both had some crud built up on them where the gases had been blowing through. I am surprised this tiny little 2 cycle engine was still running at all.

I traced out the original head gasket onto the flat gasket material with a pen.

Then I cut it with some heavy duty scissors around the outside. I did not have to be perfect. Square works fine for this job.

The hard part was cutting out the metal and rubberized head gasket material. I ended up using a drill to put holes all the way around the inside of the head gasket where I needed to cut out the center.

Then I used a carpet knife to finish the job. Again the drill was used to drill out the bolt holes.

I used a rubber mallet and a piece of wood to flatten the new homemade generator head gasket before taking it outside to mount onto my generator.

The new DIY head gasket slipped right onto my HF generator cylinder with ease.

I put the head on and screwed it down.

Now for the test run.

It fired and sputtered a bit but would not run. A bit tighter on the bolts and then another try at running the generator.

I did not want to torque the bolts down too far. I did not want to damage the soft aluminum cylinder.

The engine started right up and ran well.

Success.

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