Maintaining your RVs Onan Generator

TODD

Welcome to another Todd’s Two Minute Tech Tip Tuesday. Brought to you by the National RV Training Academy, the largest hands-on RV training academy in America.

Hey everyone, its Santa Todd here, and its that time of year where I bring you gifts. A lot of you have been asking about the generator. So if you have an RV style generator you may have some questions on service intervals. Well rather than me tell you which is usually 100% right anyway, I want to go ahead bring on the Advanced Generators Instructor from here at the National RV Training Academy, Chris Wilson.

CHRIS

The most important thing you can do when owning a generator is to make sure you follow the service intervals from the manufacture. The first oil change is supposed to be around 50 hours and some generators are listed at 20 hours. Every manufacturer is different so make sure you follow the owner’s manual. People skip that and go right into the first oil change, that’s no no. You want make sure we get that first oil out of the generator and get it serviced to get all the metal out of it from breaking in. That’s the most important oil change you can do on a generator and it’s very important. We’ve seen a lot out in the field from people who have skipped that. Once you get to about your third service interval on an Onan, about 450 hours, you’re going to get a bigger kit. All of our components are going to come in this nice kit made by Onan’s from Cummins. Everything’s contained in here that you need instead of trying to source them separately. I highly recommend you stick with what comes from Onan, that way you don’t absorb any of the liability; you’re using their products to do the maintenance on their products and you cover yourself.

So in the kit you get your spark plugs, an oil filter, air filter, everything’s all ready to go so you don’t have to look up part numbers for all different components, you get it all in one kit.

TODD

Where do you get the kit, is the question.

CHRIS

I highly recommend that you order it directly from Cummins. If you’re over a certain dollar amount they will ship for free.

TODD

Alright so let’s go ahead and do a kind of a quick recap you have your burn in right.

Typically that’s going to be half the cycle, so it may be at 50 hours or it could be at 25, check your user’s manual. It depends, if you have an Onan 4,000 watt generator, the burn in may be a little more frequent or a bit smaller than say a 5,500 watt; 7,500 watt; or even the 12,000 watt generator. From there you have your regular cycles, 100 hours, 150 hours or whatnot, again the manual is going to tell you. The first one is most important, don’t skip it, change the oil.

Change the oil the second time, then around the third one this is whenever we’re going to do the big service. Change out the air filter, fuel filter, and spark plugs. From there we go back to our normal usage. Now are we looking at miles?

CHRIS

No, we are looking at hours. Most of these generators will have an hour meter built onto the generator. Now when I say, “most of these generators”, I’m talking about the most common one we are seeing, Onan RV style generators, but we’re starting to see a lot of other brands out there.

We’ll get into that in another video. On the Onan specific ones they’re going to have either an hour meter, usually on a remote panel or on the generator itself. Keep a log book and log those hours so you can keep track because, when you’re RVing you’re all over the place so it’s hard to keep track of when the last oil change or service was done. Another thing that happens at 450 hours is a valve adjustment. Now that is a big very deal on at least the first one, you have to make sure that their clearances are correct on the valve so you don’t do any internal engine damage from not getting them adjusted. Now you want to see what happens when you don’t follow the manufacturer’s procedures?

TODD

Sure, I usually sell the rig before I get to 450 hours but go ahead.

CHRIS

So the piston is going up and down inside the engine. When we’re changing the oil, we are keeping the oil clean. The clearances in this are so close to the cylinder, we need to make sure no containments are in between it. When we get contaminants in between it or low oil, we get some scuffing and things break.

TODD

Now on stuff like this, of course talking more to our average viewers, they’re looking more for the full oil change when we get to that 450 mark. This is where we might want to consult hiring a technician.

CHRIS

Absolutely correct. Doing a valve adjustment is a fairly involved procedure, we have to take valve covers off, get in there with specific tools, and there’s a specific procedure you have to follow in order to adjust the valves correctly. If you make a mistake, you could end up with catastrophic damage. I highly recommend you hire a certified tech to do that.

TODD

Where would you find such a tech, that has been to the training?

CHRIS

The RV Technician Association of America. They have a nice picture of the United States, so wherever you’re at you can zoom in on that area or type in your location, and it’ll have a link to each of the technicians that are close by in your area.

TODD

If you’re specifically looking for someone trained in generators, you can filter by clicking “RV Generator Service Technician” and it’ll look for those certified technicians who have been trained on generators.

and there’s your Tech tip.

Need a Certified RV Technician in your area? Visit RVTAA.org/locate to find one near you.

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Maintaining your RVs Onan Generator