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...

[professor95]

toprudder wrote:
So it is quite likely that someone will change the plugs at some point and end up with a product that might interfere with the neighbors over-the-air TV or Bubba's CB radio.

Shucks, Bob, I can pick up Bubba's CB off of the ignition coil on my genny using the spark plug lead as an antenna!

Do you think I might be able to get some revenge if I change the spark plug? :B

[jlaustin]

toprudder wrote:

jlaustin wrote:
This is an Echotech and appears to be of good quality. It has the "CE" and "ISO" numbers on it, so I assumed that mean't it was manufactured to quality standards

There is some misconception that a "CE" marking implies quality, and that is not necessarily the case. There are certain safety and EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) standards (among others) that a product must meet before the CE marking can be applied. The CE marking is required before a product can be imported or sold in the European Union countries.

Always wondered what that "CE" mean't!:h
I also read that ISO 9001 certification doesn't guarantee quality parts - it apparently means that the management has adopted quality standards - but hey, at least it sounds good!:R

On the subject of solenoids, I've noted that you get much better prices from vendors who service the industrial machines like forklifts, etc., rather than the propane conversion folks. I used an AFC 151 for the bypass primer and it has a list price of $50+. Helmar Parts , a forklift parts distributor, sells it for $12.85!!! (They ship quickly, too!)

Regards,
John

[toprudder]

jlaustin wrote:
This is an Echotech and appears to be of good quality. It has the "CE" and "ISO" numbers on it, so I assumed that mean't it was manufactured to quality standards

There is some misconception that a "CE" marking implies quality, and that is not necessarily the case. There are certain safety and EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) standards (among others) that a product must meet before the CE marking can be applied. The CE marking is required before a product can be imported or sold in the European Union countries.

My job is testing products for EMC compliance to various standards including products destined for Europe. I've seen some that barely meet the standards, and others that meet the standard with lots of margin. I will also say that just because a product just barely squeaks by does not mean it is not a quality product. It is my opinion, tough, that a client that always shows up with a product that readily passes is usually a client that makes a quality product.

Safety testing is another issue and I admit is not my area of expertise, although I work in the same building where safety testing is performed. From what I have been able to gather, passing the safety requirements does not mean that the product is less likely to fail, it just means that when it does fail it is expected to fail in a safe manner. 🙂

On the issue of spark plugs, I have had to test various engines and powered equipment to European and Canadian standards. The radiated-emissions test is used to give a reasonable expectation that the device will not interfere with radio or TV reception. Sparkplugs (or any arc generating device) create very wideband radio frequency emissions, well up into the hundreds of MHz. I've seen a HUGE difference just by changing plugs. There are resistor plugs which were the first step many years ago to suppress some of this interference. I tested some engines, that had regular resistor plugs, that failed the RF emissions test. Champion makes a plug that has some type of inductor included that reduces these emissions by as much as 20dB (an order of magnitude) over the resistor-only plugs. One engine manufacturer has "RFI compliant" versions of their engines that includes these plugs as well as a shielded plug cable, although my experience has been that just the plug change is usually all that is needed to meet compliance.

I've never been able to find a place to purchase these special plugs locally, however. So it is quite likely that someone will change the plugs at some point and end up with a product that might interfere with the neighbors over-the-air TV or Bubba's CB radio.

And, no, I have not tested my Champion generator. 🙂

[tvman44]

Try putting a couple of diodes in series with the 12 volts to the solenoid, each will drop .6Vdc and almost no heat. 2 or 3 diodes in series would drop 1.2 or 1.8 Vdc and may or may not be enough to help with the solenoid heating.

[jlaustin]

professor95 wrote:


Now, John, why would you hate for my method to work better? :h
Just because another Web Site has something different doesn't mean it is better :W

No Prof, your method was fine! I hate to admit that I "messed" with something that was working fine! (However, I did need some more room for mounting the regulator and removing the trunk solenoid made that possible.)

The LPG valve is NOT suppose to get that hot. Unfortunately, some less expensive import solenoids are not truly continuous duty. You may need to trash it, chock it up to experience and purchase a nice commercial rated solenoid valve from US Carb that we know is CD rated.

This is an Echotech and appears to be of good quality. It has the "CE" and "ISO" numbers on it, so I assumed that mean't it was manufactured to quality standards - I'm calling tech support Monday and see what they'll do - it's out of warranty, but who knows?

What you can try, but it may be more difficult in the long run, is to drop the voltage to the solenoid. It should pull in at 8 VDC and hold. Of course the question is where do you get 8 VDC? Yet another heat generating resistor may be needed, but in a location open to more air flow. Measure your coil current and use Ohm's Law to determine resistor value and wattage needed, then double the wattage for your resistor. Lowering the solenoid voltage will reduce heat in the coil (again, good old Ohm's Law tells the tale) if it will indeed work off of a lower voltage -- which I suspect it will.

It'll definitely run on lower voltage - I'm running off battery and not the coil - I might try your suggestion if Echotech doesn't come through for me. The primer solenoid valve works great but is only 1/4" pipe threads and not 3/8" - would another one of those provide sufficient inlet flow to the regulator?

On the spark plug gap issue. Larger gaps will give a hotter spark on low compression engines running at a low RPM. But, as engine speed increases the wider gaps tend to misfire -- sort of like blowing out a candle. Thus, smaller gaps are needed at high RPM. Of course, high energy output coils, CD ignitions or CSD ignitions circumvent this on motorcycles, boats and cars. Unfortunately, we do not have that option on the little GX-200 type engines.

Bottom line -- You are going to be a lot better off just keeping the gap at the setting recommended in your owner's manual.

The original plug was a "TORCH" - never heard of that. I got an Autolite yesterday and gapped it to .025". I also have temporarily put a needle valve in the bypass primer line rather than a restricting orifice. The engine is starting reliably now and the mis-fires/explosions are gone! The needle valve was from Lowes and I'm sure intended for water - I found a Pneu-Trol needle valve on Ebay that appears to be appropriate for LPG and has much finer adjustment for $6.50 delivered - I'll put that in as I would not want to use the other valve without keeping an eye on it for leaks and the adjustments with it are rather coarse.

There is a spark plug made specifically for these small engines that operate on LPG. They are called a "green" plug. I have one in each of my LPG fueled engines. Personally, I cannot physically see a difference in the LPG spark plug and the gasoline spark plug. Tip length, insulator, etc. all look the same to me. So, truthfully, I cannot tell you they are better.

Mine came from Champion parts and are used in their LPG models. When I get home tomorrow I will look up the part number for you. One more but...... the plugs cost about 5x more than the OEM gasoline plug.

[jasult]

Professor
Thanks for update, it sure sounds great. I will also be looking for deals on the ones with out the EStart / remote just in case.
Thanks
Jim

[W8NONU]

Thanks for the update on the CPE 46538. Can't wait either! I like the look, too.

[professor95]

Jlaustin wrote:
My gut feeling is that some of this is inter-related? Hate to say it, but I "think" it was starting much better with the Professor's trunk solenoid/lever depressing regulator primer button setup! However, apparently the bypass primer solenoid is commonly used and "should" be able to made to work consistently and correctly! Any ideas?

Now, John, why would you hate for my method to work better? :h
Just because another Web Site has something different doesn't mean it is better :W

The LPG valve is NOT suppose to get that hot. Unfortunately, some less expensive import solenoids are not truly continuous duty. You may need to trash it, chock it up to experience and purchase a nice commercial rated solenoid valve from US Carb that we know is CD rated.

What you can try, but it may be more difficult in the long run, is to drop the voltage to the solenoid. It should pull in at 8 VDC and hold. Of course the question is where do you get 8 VDC? Yet another heat generating resistor may be needed, but in a location open to more air flow. Measure your coil current and use Ohm's Law to determine resistor value and wattage needed, then double the wattage for your resistor. Lowering the solenoid voltage will reduce heat in the coil (again, good old Ohm's Law tells the tale) if it will indeed work off of a lower voltage -- which I suspect it will.

On the spark plug gap issue. Larger gaps will give a hotter spark on low compression engines running at a low RPM. But, as engine speed increases the wider gaps tend to misfire -- sort of like blowing out a candle. Thus, smaller gaps are needed at high RPM. Of course, high energy output coils, CD ignitions or CSD ignitions circumvent this on motorcycles, boats and cars. Unfortunately, we do not have that option on the little GX-200 type engines.

Bottom line -- You are going to be a lot better off just keeping the gap at the setting recommended in your owner's manual.

There is a spark plug made specifically for these small engines that operate on LPG. They are called a "green" plug. I have one in each of my LPG fueled engines. Personally, I cannot physically see a difference in the LPG spark plug and the gasoline spark plug. Tip length, insulator, etc. all look the same to me. So, truthfully, I cannot tell you they are better.

Mine came from Champion parts and are used in their LPG models. When I get home tomorrow I will look up the part number for you. One more but...... the plugs cost about 5x more than the OEM gasoline plug.

[professor95]

I've gotten a little more information on the "new" CPE 46538 model electric start/remote controlled genny being introduced through Costco On-Line late spring or early summer.

It will have the Over Voltage Protection circuit (engine shuts down if voltage exceeds 135 VAC -- prevents connected equipment damage should the AVR fail).

A new feature is a time delay on start-up for the load as well as a release of load as the engine shuts down. This will help solve some of the issues related to AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulator) failure and even connected equipment.

The Intelligauge is standard. It gives AC volts, frequency and hours in digital format.

The bad news is it will most likely be July rather than June before it is available.

I have also been told the Champion model C46540 has crossed the half-million mark in ownership. Not too shabby for a little yellow synchronous generator.

I am really not that excited by the introduction of the 2,000 watt digital, but the 46538 unit is of tremendous interest to me with the remote start and shut down feature. I understand that while the remote is rated for 300 feet, the range is more like 300 yards. It is coded so owners will not be starting all similar gennys in a camping area at the same time. 🙂

I need one of these like a second hole-in-the-head, but I anticipate purchasing one when they are released -- I really like the concept.

No info on pricing for this model yet. I am still working on getting the $$$ figure.

[toprudder]

MrWizard wrote:
My memory says 54# , the noise is less because of the smaller engine

Thanks. That is what I expected. I've heard smaller engines that are louder than my 3000w, so that is why I asked about the noise.

I had my 3000w in the back of my truck after camping last weekend, and a friend of mine at work (who has a camper) was curious about how loud it would be. I took it out and ran it for him and he was amazed how quiet it is. There is a Tractor Supply about 3 miles from where I work, I suspect he will stop by there some day soon to buy one.:)

[toprudder]

jlaustin wrote:
....They also recommended gapping the plug at .025 for easier starting - another source recommended .020, which is where I presently have it gapped.....

I can't comment on the rest of your post, but in my experience (with gasoline) the larger the plug gap, the hotter the spark and the easier it is to start. However, I've read that gapping the plug too wide can be hard on the coil or ignition module due to the higher voltage needed to cause an arc.

[jlaustin]

I have a DuroPower 3500ES that I'm trying to "finalize" the setup where I can actually use it on my FW! For those who don't know, the DuroPower 3500ES is a 3000w/3500w peak genset that is partially enclosed with foam-lined metal panels for sound abatement. Mine is considerably modified - converted to dedicated LPG with a 3/16" orifice in the carb where the jet used to be, remote start, Hardiebacker panels on 4 sides and the top, a 500 cfm exhaust fan on the top (the bottom is completely open as it was originally), PNG Technologies (Garretson type) regulator with bypass primer solenoid, and a shut-off solenoid on the propane inlet with a Beam microvac shut-off switch. Whew!

Several observations and questions have come up:

1) The shut-off solenoid on the LPG inlet is one I just "happened" to have lying around and appears to be of good quality. It is similar to this picture but came from a differen source on Ebay and has just minor differences:

I noticed from the very first that the black housing covering the solenoid got very warm, but the valve functions fine. Last night, I inadvertently left it connected to +12v all night (the genset engine was not running all night, though!) - this a.m., it was uncomfortably hot (you couldn't touch the black housing for more than 2-3 seconds) and I could even detect a faint odor of something "hot" or burning. Throughout all this, the valve works flawlessly! Is it normal to get this hot when energized?

2) Due to mounting and space considerations, I decided to try a bypass primer (another solenoid valve) that allows LPG to bypass the regulator and is injected into the vapor line through a tiny orifice. I have it tee'd into the vapor line just downstream from the feed block mounted on the regulator) I read on one internet source (propanecarbs.com) that a common problem was using too big an orifice on the primer and "flooding" the engine with an incombustible vapor concentration - they recommended no bigger that a 1/16" orifice on engines under two liters. They also recommended gapping the plug at .025 for easier starting - another source recommended .020, which is where I presently have it gapped. I tried a 1/16" orifice at first, and the engine seemed to try to start with the initial attempt, but on subsequent attempts it wouldn't start. I sleeved the 1/16" orifice down with a large bore needle that I epoxied-in, this made the engine start and turn over a few times on nearly every attempt, but it won't continue to run except for what seems to be randomly and occasionally. Sometimes, I can give a manual "shot" of primer with the primer button and it starts readily. The vapor line is 3/8" i.d. ... any ideas???

3) When the engine does catch and run, it runs well and adapts to electrical loads, etc., without a problem. Sometimes on shut-down (by turning off the inlet solenoid), the engine makes a "chug" or "pop" out the exhaust pipe. Occasionally, it's a very loud "pop" like a firecracker! I "assume" this is unburned fuel exploding? Why would this happen if the solenoid cuts off the fuel sufficient to kill the engine???

My gut feeling is that some of this is inter-related? Hate to say it, but I "think" it was starting much better with the Professor's trunk solenoid/lever depressing regulator primer button setup! However, apparently the bypass primer solenoid is commonly used and "should" be able to made to work consistently and correctly! Any ideas?

Regards,
John

[MrWizard]

My memory says 54# , the noise is less because of the smaller engine

[toprudder]

MrWizard wrote:
My first cpe generator was the 1200w model.
I used it for almost a year then bought the rv ready
Inmo you cant go wrong with the little one

How does it compare, weight and noise wise, to the 3000w model?

[MrWizard]

My first cpe generator was the 1200w model.
I used it for almost a year then bought the rv ready
Inmo you cant go wrong with the little one