Boondocking, Generator & HEAT!

[rocmoc]

Just returned from a 4 week trip to the NorthWest from SouthWest/Arizona and back. It was HOT, even in the NorthWest. Had to run the Gen a LOT. On the way home to AZ temps ran 110+ thu SouthEast Oregon, Nevada & Arizona. By the time we were just north of Las Vegas temps were 111+ daytime and cooled down to a cool 87 over night. Gen had now ran nearly 24/7 for days. Too much heat even for our radiator cooled Onan diesel gen. Finally gen shut down (overheat protection built into the gen) and we only had the engine driven AC. Started a search on internet and found this was fairly common. Gen/MH is going into local Onan dealer Wed to bring the gen back online. Our new rules. At 95 degrees we are headed into a park for shore power and are staying home in the hottest part of the year with brick & motar AC and pool. Just wanted to get a shout out as I had never heard any limitations for the Onan in heat. If you search the net you will find plenty of post where other RVers have ran into the same heat related problem.

rocmoc n AZ

[Acampingwewillg]

I can't speak to the Onan but I do have a front mounted water cooled Power Tech 10 KW diesel generator on our Vogue. We travel in Hot weather all the time where I've run it for days on end with little down time. Knock on wood, it has always been up to the task, I do monitor the temps closely but since my dash air hasn't worked for a long time, I rely on the Gen and roof airs.

[pnichols]

An RV Onan generator over-heating - due purely to any natural ambient air temperatures that one would find in the U.S. - doesn't quite "sound right" to me.

These RV generators cost around $3K on up, so they should be able to take natural high ambient air temperatues if the oil used in them is the grade that Onan recommends for high temperatures. I'll bet that built-in Onan vehicle generators are used around the world, including in the hottest places on Earth.

I wonder if some marginal part in your generator didn't cause it to fail just from long hours of running, per se?

A couple of other thoughts: If you ran it while going down the road ... where is the Onan's radiator located relative to the scorching air washing off behind the RV's hot engine while underway? Due to this, perhaps the air coming in around your Onan's radiator was in fact way higher than the ambient air temperatures. Adding to this, the ambient air temperatures for several feet above hot highway concrete/blacktop surfaces are going to naturally be much higher than the ambient air temperatures above the ground at campsites.

Then again, perhaps if our summers are going to average hotter and hotter, RV generator designers will need to up their game such that their generators - if properly maintained - can be used 24/7 for long periods regardless of ambient air temperatures in a campsite or when going down the road.

[kenwautoone]

This is pretty common in the Las Vegas area in the summer...Ken

[Sam_Spade]

Don't know if it is a factor in your case or not......but my generator tries to blow it's cooling air DOWN where it hits the ground and just kind of accumulates under the floor of the RV. When it is HOT out, I put a medium sized "desk" fan under there to blow the hot air OUT from under the floor.