3000W Chinese Gensets Info.

[professor95]

professor95 wrote:
EDIT ADDED 45/5/2013- When this thread started in March of 2005, I never expected to see it survive this long or amass the quantity of information that has been shared here.

In the eight year run of this thread we have amassed almost 10,000 postings and surpassed a million views. This creates somewhat of a dilemma for anyone who has just discovered the forum.

Since the amount of information is virtually overwhelming, I suggest you set your preferences for this thread to read "newest first" and then begin to page backwards.

What you will find in these pages is a wealth of info on virtually any make or model of Chinese manufactured synchronous (non-inverter) generator in the 3,000 watt performance class. Info will include how to rewire series coils to parallel to obtain maximum wattage from a single 120 volt outlet. Tips on further reducing sound levels, how to care for these generators, which ones are "RV ready" and provide the best overall performance for the dollar invested. Which companies NOT to deal with, where the best prices are, how to safely wire the generator into a home or RV, how to check your RV for electrical faults, sources for generator accessories, which 20/30 adapters are safe to use and which are not. How to convert a gasoline generator to propane or NG. This is only the beginning. The forum has a life of its own with the focus sub-topic switching frequently. Still, the main topic of utilizing the amazing, inexpensive Chinese gensets is always there. The amount of creativity and innovation presented in these pages is indicative of the talents shared in the diverse backgrounds of the folks who make up our combined RV community.

Many of the original brands and models of Chinese gensets mentioned in the introduction and early pages of the thread have since disappeared. New EPA and CARB emissions requirements, company bonds assuring the emissions warranty will be honored even if the company goes out of business, and fierce competition in the industry have changed the playing field. Champion Power Equipment has become the apparent "trophy team" providing an ever expanding retail outlet, an ample parts supply, a strong warranty and excellent customer service. CPE has continued to improve their product and now offers a new model (#46538) with exclusive convenience, safety and performance features aimed at the RV market. Big names like Cummins/Onan, Honda and Generac all now have Chinese built open frame synchronous gensets available. Ironically, the prices often found on these gensets has not significantly changed during the past eight years - even with the devaluation of the American Dollar and new EPA/CARB requirements.

I also encourage you to use the search function and even the advanced search options to find information. Key works such as "rewiring", "PowerPro", "Champion", "Onan Homesite", "Duropower", "ETQ", "Jiung Dong or JD", "Tractor Supply", "Costco", "Lowe's" and "Home Depot" are all examples of keywords that will give you specific information on different models being sold by retailers today.

Or, you can fill your glass with your favorite beverage (keep more close by - maybe some munchies as well :D, sit back at your computer, tell your wife (or significant other) that you will see her in the morning and spend the next 10 or so hours reading through the postings.

No one on the forum gets mad if you ask a question that is a repeat. Please do not hesitate to post to the forum. All questions are considered important and those active on the forum will do their best to respond with a valid answer.

Also note we are not out to knock the Honda, Yamaha, Kipor or other brands of high end digital gensets. We recognize the quality of these products and their suitability for quite, efficient RV use. But, there is a flood of reliable, inexpensive and comparatively lower cost gensets coming out of China that are excellent alternative choices for the RVer wanting power to run an air conditioner, microwave, etc. without excessive noise or breaking the budget.

Oh, one last thing. The folks on this forum are true gentlemen. We do not flame one another or the product discussed - period. Ugly contributors usually have their comments and remarks ignored by our masses. It is not a forum to start arguments to obtain a clear win. We do disagree on many issues, but we have all agreed to do that in a respectable manner.

We now have the introduction of more and more inverter gensets. There is a rather extensive thread named "The Official Unofficial Champion 2000i Generator" on this forum. Today, I added info on the new Champion 3100i inverter genset. Discussion on this product may get moved to its own thread at a later date.

Many have looked upon this thread with distain saying Chinese is cheap and doomed to failure. I remember saying exactly the same thing about Japanese products a few decades back. But, over the past eight years the track record for Chinese built generators has shown otherwise.

Please, join us in a fascinating journey down the Chinese built genset road of knowledge.

This is the question I posted that got it all started back in March 2005.......

Randy

For a little over a month now, I have been somewhat intrigued by the availability of a 3000 watt, 6.5 HP generator at Pep Boys and Northern Tool for under $300.00. The engine on this generator looks identical to a Honda 6.5 HP OHV engine. Knowing that the Chinese have become very adept at “cloning” reputable technologies from other manufacturers, I was not surprised at the similarities. Neither store could give me any information on the generator nor did they have a “running” display model.

I have done a little research. This is what I have discovered:

Many of these generators are imported by ELIM International (www.eliminternational.com) out of Buffalo, New York from Jiung Manufacturing in China. (The unit at Northern is identical but carries the JIUNG name.)

The engines are indeed a Chinese knockoff of the popular 6.5 HP 196cc Honda Engine. “Supposedly” Honda has licensed the engine technology to the Chinese manufacturer of the product.

The Chinese company that makes the ELM3000 generators is a rather large, diverse, long-standing company with a reputation for “above average quality” Chinese made products (Jiung Manufacturing). There are many more Chinese companies making almost identical gensets.

The generators at PepBoys do have a six month limited warranty. But, it is only on the engine (not the generator) and requires paying for shipping to and from Buffalo. Probably not a very practical thing to do if you have warranty issues.

ELIM does supply replacement parts (a PDF parts manual is available on the ELIM web site). No prices are given for replacement parts nor is there an “availability listing”.

The generator head itself is a brushless design. The only really significant wear parts in the generator are the bearings – most likely universally available.

The published dB rating is 67 at 23 feet. This is “reasonably” quite for a generator of this size as most comparabl.... The 67 dB rating is the same as Honda gives their 3000 watt CycloInverter with a “look alike” eng...

[Damdifino]

My ELM3000 arrived today, a day early. Fired up on the first try, and ran for a hour and a half before I shut it down. One thing surprised me...the two 110 VAC plugs have a sideways 'T' shaped slot on one side. I can't plug anything in until I swap out the receptacle.

[Emptyspaces]

thetrillofspeed wrote:
Seems like a lot of people have purchased these generators.....we are well into summer, who has the most hours on their generator? How are they running?

ELM3000 has 10 hrs. (installed an hourmeter for tracking). Changed to Mobil1 10w30 syn. oil at 10hrs break in. No problems (other than noted when first unpacked in an earlier post). Normal dino oil changes are at 30 hrs. May extend this slightly with the syn. Will just depend on how it looks at 30 hrs.

[LittleBill]

i have 4 hours only on mine, run at 3100watts the entire time, rated 2800w, ran flawless, hishdeer i changed the oil at 4 it was pretty silverly, i would change your oil now, then again down the road it only takes like half a quart

[Hishdeer]

MY Honda clone 3000 watt with the 196cc engine is purring like a sleepy kitten and has performed flawlessly for about 5 hours. I think I will change the oil in a another couple hours to Mobil One 10W30.

[Walrus127]

I just thought I would add my 2 cents here. I bid on an Ebay actuion on Sunday July 10th and won. I sent payment by paypal that night. On Monday the 11th I recieved notification that my order was recieved and been sent to shipping. Today I recieved the UPS tracking number and it shows delivery for Thursday July 14. Guess I will just have to wait and see, I will let you know how it turns out.

Keith

[mavapa]

I just checked my shipping information, which elim e-mailed to me today. The generator had already been delivered. They shipped on July 7 and it arrived by UPS today, July 12. Unfortunately, I am working out of town so it will be this weekend before I get to open it and check it out. I hope it's not in my wife's way. She has enough to deal with worrying about our missing cat.

[thethrillofspee]

Seems like a lot of people have purchased these generators.....we are well into summer, who has the most hours on their generator? How are they running?

[mokanmikey]

I got my Champion 3500 Watt Gen today. As I have been following the posts on this unit, I was hoping for the newer model that has:

Receptacles : 30 amp 120 volt twistlock - 1 - 20 amp breaker
30 amp 120/240 volt t/lock - 1 – 15 amp breaker
20 amp 120 volt Duplex - 1 - 20 amp breaker
12 volt output with charging cord – 1 - 10 amp breaker

This is not what I received.

Instead I got the older unit that has :

One 120/240volt outlet protected by a 20amp circuit breaker
Two 120 volt ac, duplex receptacles
One 12volt 10amp dc outlet

As you can see it has the NEMA L14-30R (30amp - 125/250v) receptacle only and not the as advertised "30 amp 120 volt twistlock - 1 - 20 amp breaker".

Now bear with me I don't know as much about electrical as I would like, Is the L14-30R putting out 240 volts as is?

With the proper wiring on an adapter (dogbone) I will use 1 leg of this and have a L14-30P (plug) to a RV 30 Amp 125 Volt female receptacle. Correct???

What should the power output be from this? Enough for a 13,500 AC and a few lights?

From another post regarding L14-30r

Golden_HVAC wrote:
If you want to tie this into a 30 amp 120 volt RV cord, then just use 1 brass screw (there will be two of these) one silver screw for the white wire, and it goes without saying that the green screw is for the ground wire, so I will not mention it. If you want to adapt this to a 50 amp 120/240 volt RV cord, you can do this too

Is this correct?
Please respond in non-tech lingo as possible :R
Thank you very much!

[youth4him]

Thanks. I took temps (IR) all over the block, and the 240 is the max temp, which was at the bottom of the block. At the spark plug, it was more like 220. In my experience, you'll get some changes in performance when things approach higher limits, but this was doing it's thing with no change at all in sound or voltage.

I'm doing full synthetic before we head out this weekend, hopefully that will help.

[Emptyspaces]

youth4him wrote:
Does anyone know what the "safe operating" temperature range is for these little gensets?

Generally the problem with air cooled engines isn't the overall block temp but certain areas that are prone to overheating. Usually the cylinder head temperature and exhaust valve are the areas of concern.
The earlier VW aircooled were famous for the #3 cylinder exhaust valve breaking off due to reduced cooling air in that area.

Without installing a cylinder head temperature gauge and knowing the safe limits for that engine it's anybody's guess. At the very least go to a full synthetic oil.

[youth4him]

Quick follow up question...

Does anyone know what the "safe operating" temperature range is for these little gensets?

I did some more testing on the enclosure today since it's in the mid 80's, and the block temp was about 175 with no enclosure, and about 240 with the enclosure. This is with dino oil.

I read some air-cooled engines in this size (200cc) do well in the 270-300F range.

Anyone have any thoughts? The enclosure is vented with a fan sucking air in the bottom and out a 3"x3" hole.

[youth4him]

Just a quick report/fyi for those of you with these gensets.

Took it out for the first time this weekend, temps in the high 80's/low 90's. We decided to run the a/c, 13.5k unit. At first, it was all wacked out, acting as if it wasn't getting enough juice.

As it turns out, on these models (which might we well known in these 83 pages), if you plug something into both duplex sides (something in each outlet, not plug), the genset splits the power between them, thus losing 1/2 of the available power on each side.

I have an enclosure with a fan, so that's what the other plug was using. All I had to do was put both the TT plug, and the fan plug on the same side, and all was fine. The A/C worked flawlessly, and thanks the the enclosure, you could barely hear the genset outside of our campsite. I forgot my temp gauge, so I kind of fretted about that, so more high temp testing to be done this weekend.

We were also able to run the a/c and the micro at the same time while fixing dinner. The genset bogged slightly, but not enough to worry about, however, I decided to "manage" the 110v power by switching off the breakers in the TT for everything but the micro and the a/c, which helped a lot, as it appears the outlets and waterheater draw some power even when not "in use."

Good luck to all!

[MrWizard]

r_p_bayly wrote:
http://www.campingworld.com/cforum/index.cfm/fuseaction/post/forum/39/thread/15131645/parent/15131645/page/82.cfm
Reply to Topic
I just bought the PowerPro from Pepboys "in case" this himmicane turned more west. It's supposed to be another record year to TS and HC anyway.

Like someone else said above, I tested both 120v legs with an outlet tester and it showed both legs OK to neutral , but one leg open to ground. the neutral is not tied to the case ground circuit.
when I measure each hot leg to neutral, I get 120v and 120v.
when I measure the hot and neutral legs to case ground in the 240v receptacle, I get x=80 , n=40, y=160 volts.

my questions are:
why is the neutral NOT bonded to the ground?
will it harm anything if I add a bonding jumper to tie N to G ?
this unit cannot be tied into the house wiring, even through a transfer switch, unless the N and G can be tied together, since they ARE tied together in the house panel.

any ideas ??

I don't like those voltage differences

see if the store will exchange it for another one.

once connected to the house the unit is bonded..

the bonding wire is in the house panel.

unless the transfer switch is faulty or the cable has a bad ground, the generator is effectly bonded

I be more inclinded to drive a ground rod and ground the frame to that if & when i had to power the house.

[sniffid]

I just looked at the ebay auction page and the price is $269.

[r_p_bayly]

http://www.campingworld.com/cforum/index.cfm/fuseaction/post/forum/39/thread/15131645/parent/15131645/page/82.cfm
Reply to Topic
I just bought the PowerPro from Pepboys "in case" this himmicane turned more west. It's supposed to be another record year to TS and HC anyway.

Like someone else said above, I tested both 120v legs with an outlet tester and it showed both legs OK to neutral , but one leg open to ground. the neutral is not tied to the case ground circuit.
when I measure each hot leg to neutral, I get 120v and 120v.
when I measure the hot and neutral legs to case ground in the 240v receptacle, I get x=80 , n=40, y=160 volts.

my questions are:
why is the neutral NOT bonded to the ground?
will it harm anything if I add a bonding jumper to tie N to G ?
this unit cannot be tied into the house wiring, even through a transfer switch, unless the N and G can be tied together, since they ARE tied together in the house panel.

any ideas ??