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...

[MrWizard]

I will agree, costco posts are NOT commercial posts and should not have been deleted, the ebay, generator wheel kit post , did appear to be a commercial post.

I have a champion RV genset and i love it, I will recommend them over brands I don't know, but i'm not going to come out and call the costco generators bad.

but i will say if I were asking questions and for recommendations, because i had several choices, costco kragen 'harbor frieight' , and the price difference was $100 or less , I would likely go with the one that had the most favorable recommendations despite the urge to save a few dollars

it seems we have some people that ignored the advice they ask for, then want us to justify it for them, an tell the 'other' generator is the same as the champion

and do not like it when others, say 'for the $50 more' 'i would have' or 'you could have' got the champion

that costco genny , might give you just as good service, as i'm getting from my champion,

it just hard for those of us 'bought the champion' to justify saving less than $100 'buying the generic brand' when the CS support has proven to be so good from the champion brand

it's almost as bad asking the honda owner to recommend you buy a kipor

read the kipor thread and the honda ui threads, then ask yourself if for 50-100 savings you would buy kipor instead of honda

champion is not the only choice in Chinese generators, but it doesn't have a flavor of the week, or a buy a container and we will put your name on it.

there is at least one and maybe several other brands that have an AVR, i remember the schematic for one being posted, it's not a champion RV model but it does have AVR and several members have bought this unit and rewired the plugs to get full power

the peps boys and costcos in my area have sold at least 3 different brands in the last 18 months , the local kragens has carried only ONE the champion line.

the AVR, the consistently fast excellent customer support, and the brand loyalty the quality is inspiring, are the reasons I recommend the champion.

we all respect your right to save the $50, it's your right & your decision, but just remember you ask for advice, and made your decision in the other direction, and its NOT the same generator, it did NOT come from the same factory, it was your decision, good luck,

sorry, i get long winded every now & then

[phil-am]

I just picked up the Champion 4000/3500 watt at Tractor Supply in Farmington, MO in anticipation for this ice storm that's headed this way. Was $399, but upon checkout found out it was on sale for $349 even though it was not noted anywhere that it was. Ended up paying only about $15 more overall (after tax) than if I ordered from partsamerica and had it shipped. Now the wife and I have some peace of mind in case we lose power again in the middle of winter. We have 25 gallons of gas in 5 gallon containers in the garage, 35 gallons in the van and 13 gallons in the car, so we are set if the s**t hits the fan again. Next step will be to get a tri-fuel kit so I can just use the natural gas that we have here at home as a better fuel supply. I even picked up a hardened logging chain and a bigass padlock to keep it from walking off in the middle of the night 🙂

[MELM]

Commercial sales posts (and related) deleted.

Off topic posts deleted.

Remember the topic...

[BeeronIce]

Costco here in Montreal sells the Champion generators but not the RV model. I had bought mine through parts America before knowing they carried them. Im just waiting for a reason to use mine before camping season 🙂

[KD7UFS]

Wow, I just finished following this thread from the beginnings. It was well worth the two days it took just for the little asides that taught me things I never would have thought to ask.

Some comments I have: First my compliments to the Professor for his incredible patience and persistence. I would have given up a year ago at least.
Second, one of the primary dangers I see is that some of these generators have a 220/240 outlet that has no neutral. This would not be so bad if they were using a type of receptacle that did not have a terminal for the neutral, but it is a deadly trap to anyone who tries to use it as a standby generator. I would verify and if necessary add the neutral jumper before I first started the generator, it is easy to do, and a year from now when you have forgotten it is not there, might save you life. Next, transfer switches. Remembering Murphy's law that something will go wrong, even something not in any way related to the generator, when the insurance investigators and lawyers arive I want that transfer switch to have a UL label on it. I spent less then $200 for one at Grainger that has a 60 amp breaker to connect the commercial power, and a 60 amp breaker to connect to the generator. They are interlocked by the manufacturer so that only one can be closed at one time. It has space for 4 more breakers to go to the loads. By inserting one 2 pole breaker for my 240 volt well pump and two duplex breakers for my furnace and 3 lighting circuits this one box solves the entire problem and is legal. Another thought, don't run the cord to the generator under the garage door, the wind will shift and the carbon monoxide will accumulate in the garage, 100% sure thing. In the snow storm we had a few days ago, a total of 15 people died of carbon monoxide(Counting New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington). Run 4 conductor, minimum #8 wire to a blank wall of the garage and install a pigtail on the outside to plug into the generator.

For your RV, why waste money on a transfer switch when you install the generator. Run wiring from the generator compartment to the compartment where your shore power cord is and install an outlet permently connected to the generator. When you are not using your shore power cord to connect to the post, leave it plugged into the generator outlet. If your cord normally connects to a male connector on the outside of the RV, place the outlet next to it a make up a 2 foot long cable to connect the two together. Much cheaper then a transfer switch and can never fail connecting the two sources together. You will notice that you need to run the exact same wiring if you do install a transfer switch.

Back to the home, before I had the transfer switch, I had a very simple way to run my furnace on emergency power. I disconnected the wire leading to the furnace from the breaker and spliced it and it's acompanying neutral and ground to a cord that ran through a clamp to outside the breaker box. I then connected the furnace breaker to a dedicated outlet directly below the breaker box. Plug the cord into the outlet, and all is as before, except that I now have a plug the I can plug into an extension cord if the panel has no power. Total cost about $5.

Thanks for you patience if you read all this, I will continue to follow this forum.

Daniel

[WaltinColo]

FYI..
I just ordered a wheel kit and cover for my 3500 directly from Champion at 877-338-0999 ...
If you use the option 1 then 2, youll get connected to the Calif office and it was cheaper..atleast for me..

It'll come outta Calif to me in Colorado...
It will be $67 total, including shipping...
Just for info, i found that ordering just the wheel kit would cost $41 with shipping ($29 for the kit), so that ebay price isnt so bad after all...

Walt

[SonicLogic]

Today, at Pep Boys, I noticed that the Coleman ProForce 2500 generator had been marked down from $299.99 to $269.98. It’s also eligible for a $50.00 mail-in rebate which makes the final price $219.98.

[FJ40Smurf]

Oldfordman wrote:

FJ40Smurf wrote:


I am only interested in the 240V 30A output side for a backfeed and won't use the duplex side.

Remember, you will not have 30 Amps available at 120V. The rated output of this generator is 3250 Watts so you will only have 13.5 amps available on each bus if you backfeed through an outlet like the one for the dryer. This will be enough for a furnace on one leg, but nothing else on the same leg. It will be important for you to "map your panel" so you know what loads you will be able to have on at the same time and which "leg" they are fed from. The BEST way is to not "backfeed" but to add a transfer switch/panel. It will keep you from damaging things and placing the line repairmen at risk from power that might get backfed into the grid. In most, if not all areas, it is illegal to backfeed without using a transfer switch.

Good Luck.

I have my panel mapped out and 13.5 amps is going to be plenty to run my 1.75 amp gas fired boiler's circulation pump along with a fridge and a light or two. 🙂 Gas hotwater also. I will be off the grid before I backfeed. I thank everyone for your concern, but no worries, when I did my heavyup last year to 200amp I had them put in a transfer switch for the day I knew I would get a generator. Problem is the switch is too far from the outbuilding where the generator will live. Hence the backfeed through my welder outlet on my outbuilding subpanel. I thought I was going to install a whole house natural gas generator but for how seldom I lose power I can't justify the price.

I called up my local TSC and they must not be a "complete" TSC because they don't carry the Champion. I have not had the time to set this thing up but will post up when I do.

[jimmyfred]

.............Well , I just foundout TSupply has the Champion with the RV plug on sale for 359.99 . I , also priced one with Parts America starting at 299.99 + 50 shipping and Sales tax of 25 it doesn't cost me any less than buying it right here in good old texas . So , they'll call me when it comes in , probably after the ice storm . Anyway , they started one that was already gassed up and it seemed very quiet to me .
.............I'm still very interested in the Subaru inverter units and will probably order one when we get alittle closer to spring . jf

[subcamper]

Well, I just fired up the Champion after having it sit there a couple of months after I bought it. It sounds just like my ELM3000, quieter than the construction generators, not as quiet as the Honda/Yamaha units. It started right up and the voltage was at 125 volts with no load. I plugged in a Milwaukee 15 amp circular saw, the engine momemtarily loaded down when I started the saw but then went back to normal.

I gave up trying to fix the ELM3000 for now. It needs an new rotor and repeated calls and E-mails to Eliminator (located right here in the Buffalo area!) go unanswered. I am willing to pay for another rotor but they won't get back to me. I had the rotor replaced once already last year under warranty, but their tech at the time is apparently no longer with them. I hate to throw away an engine that runs really well. My son wants me to make a go-kart out of it but I'd rather just fix it and have 2 generators.

Does anyone know how to get the rotor off on an ELM3000? It looks like you remove the long bolt going thru the rotor shaft and then there must be a "tapered joint" similar to a Jacobs taper on a drill press. I got the bolt out easy, but can't pull the rotor off. I even built a puller, tried a slide hammer attached to the end of the rotor, but no luck.

Steve

[WaltinColo]

Oldfordman wrote:

WaltinColo wrote:
After my initial testing, (got about 3 hours on it) my Champion is just sitting in my garage waiting for camping season to start! 🙂

Cant wait!

Walt

Mine didn't have to wait for Camping. We have used it for all the power outages here. Interesting winter in the NW. Record Winds, Record Rains, and today it is snowing.

Should have gone South.

We havent had that trouble yet.. but you can bet ill fire it up if that happens. 🙂

[Oldfordman]

WaltinColo wrote:
After my initial testing, (got about 3 hours on it) my Champion is just sitting in my garage waiting for camping season to start! 🙂

Cant wait!

Walt

Mine didn't have to wait for Camping. We have used it for all the power outages here. Interesting winter in the NW. Record Winds, Record Rains, and today it is snowing.

Should have gone South.

[wabsage]

Awhile back someone (the Professor?) posted that Champion was going to release a new version of the RV generator in 2007. Does anyone have more info on when it's going to be released or what features it's going to have?

Thanks.

By the way, if you haven't heard it enough already. Thanks for all the great info on these generators!

[WaltinColo]

After my initial testing, (got about 3 hours on it) my Champion is just sitting in my garage waiting for camping season to start! 🙂

Cant wait!

Walt

[code3run]

I thought I would never go back to this post but here I am. I just wanted to say my champion 3500w has not failed me yet. One pull start and even a couple compliments on how quiet it is. I do try to ask for a little help lifting it in and out of trailer but do it myself if I have too....Best 299.00 I spent..