Onan Adjustment

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:

Be certain you do not have a fault in the neutral circuit of the generator. Unplug. Stop generator. Turn off all breakers. Unplug everything that has a plug.

Measure ohm resistance between neutral and the rig's earth ground wire circuit. What do you see? Neutral is never switched folks, so the test is viable. A full-on bond, can drive some generator regulators to err.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying about neutral not being switched, but it's possibly misleading.

A built-in RV generator should have neutral bonded to ground at the generator (permanently). However, the neutral and the hot line(s) are switched to the rest of the RV's electric system via whatever sort of transfer switch arrangement there may be--usually either an automatic transfer switch or a socket the shore power cord gets plugged into.

If there's an automatic transfer switch, the neutral from the generator will not be connected to the rest of the RV electrical system unless the generator is running and the transfer switch has switched over to the generator. They are usually set up so that the generator has priority, which in turn usually means the shore power cord would have it's neutral connected by default when there's no power on either input.

If it's a socket arrangement, then of course the neutral will be connected with the generator not running provided the cord is plugged into that socket.

At any rate, the ground and neutral should be bonded together at the generator if you're measuring on that side of the circuit. On my Onan KY installation, this is done by physically connecting them both to a single mounting lug doohicky in the generator where the chassis ground (which is also the negative DC return for the starter) connect. This does differ from portable generators, where neutral and ground are usually not bonded by the generator.