Power is everything. We’re reliant on it for every single moment of every single day, and while we don’t ascribe it any monetary value or cherish it as a source of wealth, it is more beneficial to humanity than all of the riches under the sun.
Without it, we’d be lost and left to flounder without direction as we desperately tried to find a way to fuel the things that keep our world turning.
Thankfully that sort of nightmare scenario, one in which there’s no more electricity, is the sort of late-night fairy story that used to terrify us before we realized how ridiculous it was.
But it did make us think “What if…?” and that thought process drove us to try and find a solution to the haunting idea that one day the grid would go down. And it was our desperate search for an answer to that dilemma that led to us willingly heading down the generator rabbit hole.
Since we began our generator journey, we’ve hooked ourselves up to all sorts of mobile power appliances and generators and while most of them have lived up to our expectations, we’ve yet to find a machine that we could wholeheartedly and categorically declare to be the generator that we’d happily use for the rest of our lives.
Which brings us to Predator and their astonishing 8750. It’s one of those generators that you hear the people in your favorite social media groups talking about in a hushed, reverential manner as they praise its power and potential.
Predator was a name that we’d heard of or were familiar with, but our interest was piqued, and we were intrigued, so we decided to take a chance and see if the 8750 lived up to the hype.
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Who Is Predator?
Predator is actually a brand name that Californian tool company Harbor Freight uses for their patented line of gasoline-powered generators.
Since nineteen seventy-seven Harbor Freight has been committed to selling, designing, and manufacturing high-quality, affordable tools for the working men and women of America.
This small family-owned business has one purpose and that’s to keep America turning at a price that keeps its tradesmen and women smiling.
We have no idea what drove them to dive headlong into the world of generators, all we care about is the fact that they willingly made that choice and in doing so, made the domain of the portable power generator better than it was before.
And their crowning glory? Their generator that surpasses all of the others in their catalog and makes more power than any mere mortal will ever need? That’s the 8750, a power generating monster of a machine that knocked us for six and exceeded our wildest expectations.
The Predator 8750
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Did you ever hear that old saying about good things coming in small packages? Well, it could have been written about the 8750, which given its relatively small size (it’s just under two feet high and just over two-feet-long), packs an incredible amount of electrical punching power. It really is the small acorn from a mighty powerful oak which grows every single time you hit the start button.
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Let’s Talk About Power
As with most generators, the Predators suffix refers to its power output. It’s like an immediate calling card that lets you know exactly how much electricity it can generate and how much power it will, and can, make.
The number however is slightly misleading, as while the Predator is capable of producing up to eight thousand seven hundred and fifty watts of power at peak, it usually runs at a far more sedate seven thousand watts.
That said, 7,000 watts is more than the power to keep an entire household ticking over and happy, which at the end of the day was the reason we wanted a generator in the first place, to keep us in go-go juice whenever the grid goes down.
It’s also enough to run a job site, which seems apt given that Harbor Freight made their name making tools for contractors and the folks who keep America’s gears greased and turning.
With a total of six power outputs that can be used to power all manner of 120-volt appliances, on a full tank of gasoline, Harbor Freight says that the 8750 will run for around twelve hours and pump out power for every single second of that time.
We did some simple math, and as the 8750 has a six and half-gallon tank, which means it uses half a gallon an hour while running at fifty percent load.
Honestly, we have no idea how efficient that is, or isn’t, but it does sound pretty good on paper.
And as good as it sounds on paper, it’s even better in the real world as the 402 cubic centimeter engine, which makes around thirteen horsepower, never skips a beat while it’s cranking out power.
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Revving Up
While it isn’t exactly imbued with American muscle and its thirteen horsepower isn’t going to set any gearheads world alight, the motor that sits at the heart of the 8750 is nonetheless a formidable little beast.
We’re used to generators being loud and more than a little cumbersome, and the 8750 is neither. Even at peak and when it’s running flat out, it’s surprisingly quiet.
We ran it in our garage and used it as a power source for the tools that we were using to work on our sixty-six Nova SS and the music that helps us to get through the day, and it wasn’t any louder than anything else that was going on in the garage, and whatever noise it did make soon faded into the background.
Harbor’s figures state that it makes around seventy-five decibels of noise when it’s being pushed to its absolute limit, and while we have no idea how loud a single decibel is, let alone seventy-something of them, Google says that’s around the level of average party chatter, and that sounds about right to us.
Even though a lot of generator folks are a little reticent about running generators indoors, especially gasoline-powered models, we weren’t bothered about running the 8750 in our garage, as it has a CARB (California Air Resources Board) certificate, which means that it complies with the country’s strictest emission guidelines.
So, you can run it all day and every day in your garage, as long as the space that you’re working in is properly and sufficiently ventilated, and not worry about breathing in a dangerous amount of CO2.
Turning It on and Turning It Up
The 8750’s real party trick though is how easy it is to use. It has a dual start system, so you can either crank it over, using the pull cord the same as you would an old lawnmower or invest in an additional battery pack and use the start button to turn it over.
With a face full of gauges that let you know how much gas is left in its tank, the amount of power that it’s producing at any given moment, and oil and fuel cut-off switches that automatically turn the motor off if it’s running low on, or about to run out of either, this generator makes power creation easy. All you have to do is fill it full of gas, fire it into life and it’ll make enough electricity to power your entire house.
There’s No Such Thing as Perfection
As flawless as we’ve made the 8750 sound, it does have a few inherent problems. If it runs at peak output continually, it’ll empty a full tank of gas in around three hours.
Which makes it more fuel-hungry than a Shelby Cobra charging around Daytona and will put a serious dent in even the richest generator obsessive’s pocketbook.
And it’s heavy too. It weighs close to two hundred pounds, and even with its steel cage design that’s been made to make it easy to carry unless you’ve enlisted the services of a couple of your friends to help you move it, you won’t be taking it anywhere without causing yourself significant personal injury.
However, there is an option to make it more mobile using a set of wheels that you can purchase from Harbor, but even with them fitted, it’s still heavier than a fully laden battleship.
Our Verdict
In a nutshell, we loved the 8750. Sure, it’s heavy, but the majority of that weight is down to the motor that lies at its heart, and it’s true that if you push it to the limit of its operating capacity, it’ll drain in its tank in record time, but as we can’t imagine a scenario where we’ll ever need a continuous supply of anywhere near eight thousand watts, the Predator fuel crisis isn’t something that we’ll ever have to worry about.
The things that this generator is capable of doing, far outweigh the few things that hinder it, and the more time we spend with it, the more we adore it. It’s efficient, quiet, and makes all the power that we’ll ever need. What more could you ever want from a generator?
