I am looking at a 2004 Mirada with only 17,500 miles, but nearly 650 hours on the generator. I have a 1997 rv with 37,000 miles on it with fewer hours than this. The rv does not look like it has been lived in, but I figured that if it were driven at an average of 40mph, there would have been 2 hours of generator use for every hour of driving. Does anyone have any speculation on this? Is it something I should be worried about or am I just being a little paranoid?

Possibly used for a lot of tailgating or owned by a company that used it for entertaining or other business uses.

A gas generator should go 5000+ hours so I would not worry about it. 60 hours/year.

It's obvious that the coach was not driven much but used some. Generators like to be used. 650 hours over 11 yrs. is not really that high. Generators can go 1,000's and 1,000's of hours before a rebuild.Diesel genny's can go 10's of thousands of hours before a rebuild (hearsay). Not really sure of a gas genny, but if it's half of the 20,000 hours of a diesel genny for a rebuild, 10,000 hours is a long time away.Good luck,MM.

It may have been used for boondocking or someone was running a business and needed power.

Seems like a reasonable number of hours to me. Better to run the generator than to let it sit. Those numbers wouldn't bother me at all. Also, remember some of us have used our generators at home durng power outages in addition to those who like to boondock.~Rick

High hours on generator | Good Sam Community

Fiesta
Explorer
Jun 15, 2015
Had 1100 hours on my purchased '05 rental. Was hard starting BECAUSE I did not use it enough. My '11 Bounder ran rough because I did not use it enough... Get the hint?
Got to use my '15 more...
ferndaleflyer
Explorer III
Jun 15, 2015
Mine has 3100+ hours on it and don't miss a beat----I some times go to the races and don't turn it off for 4 days.......
jluke
Explorer
Jun 15, 2015
Thanks for all of the input, casts a better light on the disparity. I was not so concerned about how many hours were on the gen as opposed to why there were so few miles vs the number of hours on the gen. All of the possible reasons given were valid and made sense. Nice to be able to just throw out a question and get so much input. Thanks again!
bluwtr49
Explorer II
Jun 15, 2015
Again, not high hours at all. For folks in warm weather areas much gen time is accumulated running the AC units while underway.
Empty_Nest__Soo
Explorer
Jun 15, 2015
I would worry more about a genset that was used too little, rather than one that had a lot of hours on it.

They are meant to be used. Sitting for extended periods can be hard on them. They should be run under load at least monthly, more for the generator end than for the engine end, but running will do it all good.

Wayne
AllegroD
Nomad
Jun 15, 2015
Does the owner have maintenance docs? High hours are OK if maintained.
jwmII
Explorer
Jun 15, 2015
650 hours on a generator is nothing.
Preacher_Man
Explorer
Jun 15, 2015
Coach in my signature has 276K miles on it and 19615 hours on the Onan 7500. Cummings said 25K hours before I might need a rebuild....might. Generators need to be run. I'd be more concerned with the low hours and low miles on an 11 year old motorhome than anything else. Motorhomes are like airplanes, they need to be driven and generators need to be used.
Mike_M2
Explorer
Jun 16, 2015
My 1999 had 23k on the motor and 2000 hours on the Onan. They used it to go racing and pulled a car trailer. It runs just fine and my bet is it will go another 2000....
C20
Explorer
Jun 16, 2015
More you use it the better it runs. 2k hours on ours and other than routine mantence good to go.