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...

[kingman]

and another http://i12.tinypic.com/2rrq6as.jpg

[kingman]

here is a pic http://i16.tinypic.com/4g53v35.jpg

[kingman]

Hi all.I have one of the chinese generator's that is very similar to the champion model.I have done the rewire to get rid of the 240 and to get full power at 120.My question is has anybody else had there generator lose power for a couple of second's without tripping the breaker or stalling the engine when first putting to big of a load on it? If i try to turn on my air conditioning in my trailer to fast with a low battery it will trip the genny out without stalling the engine or tripping a breaker.If i reduce the load it will power back up.Do these generator's have some sort of internal protection inside beside's the breaker? I used the genny for the first time for a week of 8-10 hour's a day and just had to let the genny charge the battery for a little while in the morning before i turned on the air.After the converter had charged the battery i could use the microwave at the same time as the air without a problem.Anybody with any feedback on this please chime in. Thank's

[Old___Slow]

Mrwizard:

Thanks,

o&s

[MrWizard]

a guess an only a guess..

is not enough tolerance OR safety margin in the parts of control, it seems the ones that fail are the ones with the least use. only a few hundred or less hours

the genny is not used under load enough , mechanical parts ( govenor etc ) stick on start up until warm, and the spikes in power output and feedback kill the controls.

its the old adage use it or lose it. is very true in generators especailly onan

IMO
run an onan every day, or run it full time and only shut it down for maintaince. and it runs very well. and will last a long time. but they don't do well we left to sit unused, and then run it for 5 min to microwave something and then turned off again


don't use

[Old___Slow]

MrWiz:

Any idea why the voltage reg, so often goes out in the Onan's? They cost like h--- to replace $336.00

O&S

[MrWizard]

the short answer 'no details' is a brushless design will let you drive it to max stauration, there is no control protection of the feild just the breakers in the output, do it often enough for long enough and the heat will kill the residual magnestism of the feild core that jump starts the power generation on startup

the heat caused by saturation also kills the diodes and caps used for the feild voltage regulation,

generators with AVR control are prevented from this feild saturation by the control circuit, there fore the surge can only be momentary and NOT maintained

in other words, you were sturating the feild core and drawing more than 3000 watts from the output of the duropower, and eventualy it failed from abuse

something an AVR will not let you do.

[77charger]

just bought one of theses champions this past week when my duropower after 2.5 years of hard use went out.(motor is fine just doesnt put out voltage might be a minor fix)

I was on vacation and needed a gen for trailer to charge batts during the day and to run the a/c so that my daughter can take a nap for a couple of hours in 95 degree heat.We were at lake powell there was a checkers in page that i knew of so we went there and came back with a new gen and it was the best option at the time.oiled it up and started it fired right up let it run with no load for a while.I did notice it is a little louder than my duropower but not by much.It ran the a/c fine but couldnt do the battery charger in med or hi(big garage type one while the air was running or do the micro with the a/c running.Could be cause the heat and altitude(3610) mid to upper 90s.I had no prob with the 3500 peak duropower running both turn the a/c to low then run either micro or batt charger.

But for being able to find one easily was a bonus esp already with a 30 amp plug in it going to try the silicone on the fan thing too.Just hope it will get me at least a couple of years 2 weeks i will be useing it in the desert for the weekend runnin the a/c and it will be running constantly over the weekend til then i might be a little nervous since that will be its torture test for me

[professor95]

Old & Slow wrote:
So Mr. Cole does not need to hear for us folks.

No, I would not say that.

My impression of Mr. Cole indicates that he is extremely interested and responsive to what we want.

Consider this: The "early" 3,000 watt class Champion generators (2004 & prior models) did NOT have a 30 amp TT outlet and were NOT designed so that we could easily select the 120 volt only mode to direct full available wattage to a single outlet for our RVs. This forum, in particular, established that there was a market for such a genset. Thus, CPE built it. Other Chinese manufacturers soon followed suit.

If we had not openly communicated what we as the RV community wanted, I doubt that we would have gotten the product.

The only item still on the table (in my opinion) is further noise reduction. This one has not been ignored but providing such a unit has posed problems with the current design. I know Mr. Cole has spent significant time doing R&D on this aspect. He has not given up.

Bottom line: I believe he needs to hear from us if we are to get the products and changes we want for our RVs. Keep it up.

[Old___Slow]

Wgeorge11 wrote:
We've learned to love horsepower, fear "volts", and loath anything different like metric standards or 220 service. Legacies aside, twice the amount of copper sold is good for business, and allies our fears -and cost - of change. It's all about business as usual.

Wgeorge:

This is not high tech' so I can comment and I'll do my best to do that 5 minute thing and make it last for a additional five. Now do you
think O&S would be on this thread today if selling copper is a good thing. Ok, I get it. I do like toprudder's comment about the UK plugs.
My thought. Maybe we didn't win in WW2.

O&S

[professor95]

Old & Slow wrote:
Sorry, I did know that fact but it got lost in my quest to Power my RV with the least dig in my small pockets. So Mr. Cole does not need to hear for us folks. Can you please send me a buyer for this C46540 and I will join you and Professor and others who had the good sence to own the electric start c40008.

You don't need to change models. Your unit is less than the 5,000 watt code advisory. Just flip the power selector switch to 120 VAC. The 240 outlet will be dead.

[professor95]

MrWizard wrote:
thats exactly what the prof and I keep saying

Thanks, George.

But, I still do not think everyone is listening (reading). At least the newer contributors have joined our team and are providing further support for supporting the safety issue.

[Old___Slow]

MrWizzard:

Sorry, I did know that fact but it got lost in my quest to Power my RV with the least dig in my small pockets. So Mr. Cole does not need to hear for us folks. Can you please send me a buyer for this C46540 and I will join you and Professor and others who had the good sence to own the electric start c40008.

Thanks again,

O&S

[professor95]

Old & Slow wrote:
My thought, maybe we can ask Mr. Cole to give us a 110v (only) genset. Maybe the rules of using this genset will aid in our use.

Mr. Wizard and I have one, the 40008 electric start.

This is Mr. Cole's word-for-word response to the grounding issue. He did not ask me to post this. Posting was my decision to enhance the issues surrounding the safe use of these portable gensets:

"(On the neutral bonding issue) ...... We agree with the professor and find the naysayers less credible than they want the public to think. My reference is to the electrical association IMSA. They may be right in the common household logic, but when it comes to the generators, they need to go back over the Generators 101, putting some well known and common logic into play."

"....... we will be issuing a chart of models soon and indicate the bonding and unbonded models. As I have mentioned, Home Depot has mandated we deliver our generators with a bonded neutral for their sales. At present they are the only vendor receving this. Even though generators over 5000w in performance for commercial work are required by OSHA to have a GFI and a bonded neutral, Home Depot is requiring all units to have GFI and bonded neutral for the 2008 model year."

"..... the copy indicating the bonded neutral was written for only the Home Depot units, since they want the neutral to be bonded on their generators. This same copy ended up in the Ultra Fab units (40008 Elec. start and 40010 non elect start . These both have floating neutrals or unbonded ) The Home Depot unit is model 40012 and DOES have a bonded neutral."

[Wgeorge11]

We've learned to love horsepower, fear "volts", and loath anything different like metric standards or 220 service. Legacies aside, twice the amount of copper sold is good for business, and allies our fears -and cost - of change. It's all about business as usual.