Resetting 5500 onan flashing light

Question

We went camping a few weeks back in Hungery Valley. While running the gen it would run long enough to charge our batteries for a few minutes and shut down. Once batteries drained, I'd have to jump start the gen and do it all over again. I later found out theres an altitude adjustment on the gen. I made the adjustment for the 4500' we were in. Gen would run longer but then would shut down and start to flash.

There less than 30 hrs on the gen.and its flashing 3 times. I was able to clear while camping. Now I can't. I plan on chaing6the oil this week.

Any ideas why its flashing with such few hours?

nayther · Answer

the 3 flashes says there is an error, you need to hold it down in off for a few seconds and it will flash the actual code, first set of flashes is the first digit, second set of flashes is the second digit. It repeats each set of flashes 3x I believe. then repeats so 3 flashes followed by 2 would be error 32. You need the codes, easily found on the web.

sin_cal_hd · Answer

nayther wrote:the 3 flashes says there is an error, you need to hold it down in off for a few seconds and it will flash the actual code, first set of flashes is the first digit, second set of flashes is the second digit. It repeats each set of flashes 3x I believe. then repeats so 3 flashes followed by 2 would be error 32. You need the codes, easily found on the web.The current 3 flashes indicate service required. It goes 3 3 3 pause 3 3 3

ependydad · Answer

I agree with nayther, but the process for obtaining the second level code might be different depending on your model generator.

But, error code 33 isn't used to avoid confusion with error code 3.

This document seems to say that there should be a secondary code:
https://manuals.heartlandowners.org/manuals/Electrical/Generator/Onan%205500/Onan%20Troubleshooting%20Codes.pdf

Three blinks indicates a service fault. Press Stop once to cause the two-digit, second-level fault code to blink. (Pressing Stop again will stop the blinking.)The two-digit code consists of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 blinks, a brief pause, and then 1 to 9 blinks. The first set of blinks represents the tens digit and the second set of blinks the units digit of the fault code number.

For example, Fault Code No. 36 appears as:

blink-blink-blink—pause—blink-blink-blink-blink-blink-blink—
long pause—repeat

Out of curiosity, have you checked the oil level? I had 145 hours on my generator and was fixing to do an oil change when mine started shutting down. The code did show "oil fault" or something like that. Turns out it had ran low on oil.

nayther · Answer

thanks ependydad, didn't take the time to find the link

ependydad · Answer

nayther wrote:thanks ependydad, didn't take the time to find the linkI only found it because I went looking for what code 33 meant. That led me to 33 being reserved and then to this documentation.

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Resetting 5500 onan flashing light

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