Airplane mechanics keep detailed service and maintenance records in the plane’s logbook — it helps ‘em prevent that long drop with the short stop at the end. But a logbook can also remind you to do routine maintenance on your car, or it can help you diagnose the reason for loss of gas mileage before a serious problem develops. For tractors, combines, bulldozers, graders, generators — the machines that run and build civilization — logbooks can save jobs and lives. Mechanic Support makes this Mechanic’s Logbook software that you can configure for almost any application.

You can put Mechanic’s Logbook on your computer for $16 — you might pay more than that for a dead-tree logbook.

Mechanic’s Logbook [Mechanic Support]
Mechanic Support [Corporate Site]

Now until May 29th, Home Depot’s offering a sweet deal for anyone who’s in the market for a portable generator. You can get ten percent off, plus free shipping, on selected online generator buys. For instance, the Pramac S7500 (pictured) is marked down from $1,633 to $1,469.

It’s not a “buy one, get one free” deal by any stretch — but if you’re in the market anyway, this makes it a bunch less painful on the wallet and gets you a little breathing room to buy gear to go with it. Just remember: online only.

Generator Selection [Home Depot]

Milwaukee unveiled their new line of gas-powered generators this month, so if you’re in the market for one, now might be the time to pre-order. Ace Tool Online is taking orders and have priced it at $1,770 which is a deal considering list price on this generator is over $3,000.

The generator’s power plant — an 8 HP, 240cc Honda GX engine with a 7-1/2 gallon gas tank — provides 4,300 watts of power. The generator sends the juice to several outlets: four 20A/120V three-prong outlets, one 20A/120V twist-lock, one 30A/120V twist-lock, and one 20A/120-240V twist-lock. A dedicated, branch-rated breaker protects each circuit.

Thanks to the hand truck design, you can move the generator easily around the job — it also has a fold-away lift hook. Milwaukee provides a two-year warranty on both the generator and engine.

Press Release [Milwaukee]
4943-24 [Milwaukee]
Milwaukee 4943-24 [Ace Tool Online]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Imagine a world without wires. Konarka’s Power Plastic converts light energy into electricity for your portable devices, so you never have to plug them in to a wall socket. The light-weight plastic technology offers a cheaper alternative to the current silicon-based cells which currently dominate the solar energy market.

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After losing power during a snow storm this winter, I’ve been taking a second look at these portable powerpacks. Amazon is selling this one from Duracell for $130. The Duracell Powerpack 600HD features three three-prong AC outlets, one DC outlet, a built-in 600W inverter, a built-in AM/FM radio, emergency lights, and jumper cables. This unit comes in handy when you’re camping, working on the job, jumpstarting your car, or coping with an emergency.

Via Amazon (B000TKHMWK) [What’s This?]
Duracell [Corporate Site]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

When batteries finally die and you’re not near an outlet — and a full-sized gas generator is massive overkill — the Freeplay Weza offers a human-powered energy source. And it’s powerful enough to jump-start cars or power small- to mid-sized electronic devices like cell phones radios, and LED. lighting. Think of it as a back-up to your back-up.

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When the sour lemon transmission crapped out on TM reader (and photo pool member) mscott911’s Honda lawn tractor, he made lemonade: bolting a cheap-ass 7,500W Harbor Freight generator to the Honda’s sweet 13 HP water-cooled 2-cylinder, he created a kick-ass “portable” generator.

And for sharing with us, we’ll send him a free set of work gloves.

The good news is that we’ve got plenty of gloves left to give away, and we’re getting a big kick out of seeing all your sweet projects, shops, and other stuff. You keep sharing photos, and we’ll keep giving away gloves, OK?

Toolmonger’s Photo Pool [Flickr]

With a max AC output of 7,000 watts delivered via 120V and 240V twist-locking receptacles, this generator is clearly targeted at the jobsite.  But I can’t count the number of times I wish I had one of these at home.  Long-term power outages suck.

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If you have a Costco membership (or are thinking about getting one) this is for you: Costco is offering a $200 off coupon on this Cummins Onan HomeSite 2400 portable generator.  It features a 4-gallon tank, which Cummins claims is good for 13 hours of operation, and a 6.5 HP 4-stroke engine which outputs 2,000 watts of power.  It also has GFCI protected AC output and DC terminals and an automatic low-oil shutdown feature, and it comes with a 2-year warranty.

Cummins HomeSite 2400 [Costco]
Street Pricing [Google Product Search]