What's the best store bought pressure washer..? and my General pump

I was using my washer on the trailer its a 16 Vanguard with a General Pump T202…
It started surging yesterday putting out weak strong, weak weak strong water flow…
I checked my outlet trap and no leaves or brush blocking it… I can’t figure out what is causing it??
Don’t find on kink in my 125 hose… Is it the PUMP?? How do I cipher what is causing it…

I have a older Lowes washer I have had for a long time, its not putting out like it did. I was thinking of buying a good one to finish the job I got going… What is the best one for the money?
I saw in the todays paper a Simpson powered by Kohler 3200 PSI 2.5gpm $469, they got the Troy Built 2800 psi 2.3 gpm $299. I heard John Deer has a good one I don’t know the specs on it…

I don’t know if my Pump is going out or what cause the cut back on water flow on my big one?
Tell me what u guys think if you will…

If you have a strong enough engine on it (Honda GX390, for example) this might be a good time to upgrade to a better pump. You can replace a direct drive pump with a gear drive pump (Udor is A+!!) very easily. If you go get another low powered, direct drive pump you’ll be in the same boat again waaaay too soon.

Sorry…I didn’t see where you said it was a 16 Vanguard…Assuming it’s a 16 hp, you could easily run a 5.5 gpm pump!

I think your best spent money would be to purchase a good 5+gpm 3000 psi pump to put on your Vanguard. Northern Tool (Comet) makes a direct drive 5 gpm pump that should bolt right up. I have the belt drive version of that pump on a GX390 and the specs are underrated it performs much better than advertised.

Thanks for the feed back, today at home I ran all my hose 125 150’ out have a electric reel tks goodness… So I reel it all back on… Then I cut it on and it RAN FINE no cutting out… I came across a guy who has a rig… He was near my house he came by and checked it out said it might have had a kink in the hose… My unit is over 3 years old… Turns out this guy rebuilds the pump… He is getting me a re build kit and will re build put in new washers new valves for $50 plus about $75 for the kit… Gosh hale of a guy real nice… So being so older I’m getting it re built any way…

Nice. All is well that ends well.


One more thing: if you’re running a direct drive with no buffer tank, it was most likely a supply issue. If you have a 4gpm pump, but the spigot only put out 2gpm, you would get that “hesitation”…if your area is like mine (some rural well water, some city water with great output, and anything in between) you may have 8gpm from the spigot on a job in the morning, then 2gpm from a different job across town in the afternoon. The only way to compensate for that is to run off of a buffer tank. If you had no problem at your house, you probably had plenty of output, whereas the customer did not. A rebuild on a direct drive pump is truly a waste of money for a professional power washer, in my opinion. You would be waaaay better off in the long run by putting that money toward a pro grade pump and buffer tank setup.