Well….decided to go old school and change the fuel filters first. I shook out the old filters and found what looks like pipe dope or some thread sealant. Fair amount of it.
My generator has a raycor as the first stage and a regular fuel filters as the second stage. Second stage was clean. Changed them both and fired up the ginny and it ran for two hours straight before I shut it off.
I have a few legs of 2-5 hour driving coming up…….Betting my issue all along was fuel.
Lesson Learned: Generators need two things to run……fuel and air. Always make sure both are present when chasing issues.