Portable Generator In Place of Onan Built In Generator

Has anyone replaced their Onan generator with a portable generator...

Yes, I did!
Cheers,
-Mark

I don't have an on board propane genny and I don't have a need for one. I use my Honda year round. Many of the horse shows I work see temps in the 100s and I have no AC to tap into so the Honda runs my air conditioning and recharges my laptop computer.

We will be in Yosemite for 5 days of dry camping this week. you can run the generator for 2 hours at a time during proscribed times only. Campsites are in tree shade and its winter so reduced light for solar. I keep the propane for heating and cooking and will have 7 gallons of gasoline but I can't see needing more than 3 gallons

We only carry our H2K during ski season. The rest of the year the compartment is available for other storage. You can't do that with a fixed genny...

The other advantages of portable;
less expensive
lighter
quieter (and you can move it away from your living space)
You are not usingthe same fuel source as your heat

There may be a few other advantages...that's all that come to mind right now.

It may not be the way for everyone to go...but for our occasional use...portable is great.

Here are some pictures of my generator setup with my Honda eu3000.

I bought a cargo rack from I think TSC which was plenty heavy duty, I think rated for 500 pounds. Then I bought a front receiver hitch from curt for $115.00 delivered to my front door. You will notice in the picture I had a welder weld metal plates into the base of the generator. Slid underneath, nothing is welded to the generator but the cargo rack and generator are one. Then I lock the cargo rack in with the highest quality locking pin I could find. I use this rig on the back of my 5th wheel setup and on the front of my truck camper setup. When not in the receiver hitch everything is accessible for working on the generator. I have been using this, this way for 9 years and many many thousands of miles with no problems. One thing I really like is the extra outside storage, from my old generator compartment and I can store more gear on the front rack.

It can be done. someone fit a Honda 2k into the Lance gen. compartment.

there is also a propane conversion avl .
generator conversion kit

I considered it as the Onan burns 1/3 lb. of propane per hour of use but opted instead to install solar panels. Only reason for the generator would be to run the air conditioner and we only run it at most a couple days during the year and then we head to a campground with 120 AC hookups.

Granted we have a class A but if yours is permanently mounted in like ours the principles should be the same. Our 6.5K Onan went belly up and I am replacing it with a 7K portable generator with a Honda engine that I got from my BIL for $1000. I am removing the gas tank and installing an electric fuel pump to get gas from the MH's fuel tank to the generator. The hardest part so far is designing & building a new frame to hold it in place. It will be noisier as it runs at 3600 RPMs and the Onan ran at 2500 RPMs. But I feel this is going to be cost effective considering a reliable used Onan is just shy of $3000 and a new one is twice that much. Supposedly this newer generator will use less fuel than the older (1987) Onan did. On that point we will have to see.

The built-in generator is usually big enough to run the whole system where the portable is only good for smaller loads...

Depending where you are from East side or West side of the US you seem to be able to get away with running your generator anytime you want to if it is built-in. I guess no can tell if it is your truck motor running or the generator. This is really more of a problem on EAST side of the US since the WEST SIDE is more open country...

The Portable Generator will not have a good place to store it with the truck camper and is more prone to thief... It is never a good idea to mount the portable generator on the outside in plain view... It is also never a good idea to leave your equipment in plain view unattended...

We had to evaluate why we wanted to have the generator. In my case my 2KW Honda Generator is secured in the tail gate corner of my FOLD-A-COVER hard plastic lockable bed cover. When I need to use my generator I just pull it it out onto the tail gate. The generator is never left unattended at the camp site and goes where I go...


I only use my 2KW Generator to plug my trailer shore power into it at 8AM each day when allowed to run my generator using a RV30A-15A long dogbone type adapter. This re-charges my 255AH battery bank back up to its 90% charge state in a three hour run time so we can run some of our 120VAC items from a 600watt INVERTER and other 12VDC items direct connected to the battery bank. No air conditioner or high wattage items when camping off the power grid.

You may want to evaluate some of these same ideas for your generator setup...

Roy Ken

A few people here have. I think it could be worth it if you are running a generator a lot. I thought about getting a small generator to top of the batteries for extended boondocking, but I don't boondock that much. As it is, I just run the builtin for an hour or two a day when I don't have hookups.

Given that you need to find a place to transport the Honda, the Onan is built in and runs from an existing fuel source, I would have a hard time justifying it.