Onan quality going down????

[map40]

I have 7 motorhomes currently, 6 with Onan gensets, 3 4KY bought brand new aprox 1 year ago, 2 4KY 2007 with ~1300 hours and 1 2012 5.5K with 500 hours.

I have had motorhome for 15 years, normally they gensets have been pretty good, up until now. In the last 2 years I have had a complete engine failiure (new engine required), 12 fuel pumps, 5 sets of brushes, 4 starters, and 10+ other breakdowns.

You might say "well, they are rental units..." Well, not quite. Of the 3 gensets in the new units, all needed new fuel pumps and 2 needed new starters BEFORE THEY WERE DRIVEN BY ANY RENTER. I believe I have a little more knowledge than the average user, I have taken them apart and I have owned Onan generators with over 6000 hours, so I think I got the maintenance routine down.
Even after that, those 3 new units needed new brushes with less than 700 hours (they all failed between 650 and 720 hours of use).

ANybody experiencing similar issues? I'm sad to say, buy unit number 7 has a Q55 generac with over 3000 hours and I have never had any problems with it.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Want to see a mess? An insanely-incredible mess of control circuits in the 300 kw to 1 megawatt large generators? Onan presently does with 3,000 components what Lima, and Kato does with one twentieth the parts. When tax funded entities have all the money in the world, they specify Onan especially government purchasing agents.

California hired me to troubleshoot a generator trailer for CalTrans. It housed an 80 Kw Onan. I found two center tapped transformers burned and a melted regulator board and two fried current transformers. How the @#$%^&! do you go about burning up a current transformer?

Oh the control transformers! They absolutely had to be right on the money voltage wise. Eighty seven volts. Center tapped. 170 va. I still have this stuff in memory after all these years.

The transformers were special order from the distributor. A five week wait and three hundred and some-off dollars, each. The voltage regulator (the circuit board not the housing and terminal block) was three thousand dollars and change.

Field (rotor current) was absurdly high so I was unable to substitute another voltage regulator.

My bill to CalTrans was close to seven thousand dollars. They paid promptly, five months later.

Yet those 6.5 NH self exciting volts per hertz 18-turn models were among the toughest little generators ever built (with the exception of the remote start network).

I troubleshot an Emerald down here and traced the problem down to the power transistor and driver transistor in the voltage regulator. Oooooo Onan had buffed off the "proprietary" transistor part numbers. You don't want to know the price of an entire replacement voltage regulator.

These days, Onan holds an exalted position high up on my ---- list.

[pnichols]

Hmmmm .... our Onan 4K has been fine for 10 years in our 2005 motorhome .... but we only have a few hundred hours on it.

However, I do use the most expensive synthetic oil I can find in it and a "special" spark plug (laugh all you want 😉 ) in it. It starts right up with minimum cranking, hums along vibration-free through the coach floor, and fairly quiet without sounding labored ... as a result. So far it's well worth the $3K+ adder we had to pay for it included in our rig when we bought it new.

I really appreciate one of it's "features" which I never see mentioned in the forums - a simple to reach and convenient altitude adjustment knob.

[Chris_Bryant]

The Honda EV series were OK, but they were nothing I would call great. 3600 rpm, not quiet at all, I have a friend who kept 7 of them to keep 4 running all the time. Now he is using Onan, and has bits and pieces of the Hondas for sale. You can still buy rebuilt EVs if you like.
I don't sell many gensets at all, but I have yet to have an Onan failure, though my sample is too small to be meaningful, (or maybe I do a better install than most 😉 ).

[bobsallyh]

DrewE, you are correct, but I think they were liquid cooled. Also, when we got our new fiver in 2004, I wanted to put one of them in big time. But the Hondas were just a tad larger than the openings in a lot of RV genny bays. So with a new unit I wasn't going to reconstruct and went with an Onan Marquis Gold 7000. I have cursed it and made many new words over that "what should be a boat anchor". Having had previous experience with the Onans on our telephone bucket trucks, mine is true to form. I used to walk RV lots at auto races and when you heard choking, puking, you knew there was an Onan nearby. And those Hondas and Yamahazees just running along providing you could even hear them.

[DrewE]

bobsallyh wrote:
If Honda would bring out an RV onboard genny that would fit in the compartments that RVs are built with, Onan would be OUT of the RV business.

Honda does, or at least rather recently did: the EV4010 and EV6010. They did not put much of a dent in Onan's RV business, to put it mildly.

[otrfun]

bobsallyh wrote:
If Honda would bring out an RV onboard genny that would fit in the compartments that RVs are built with, Onan would be OUT of the RV business.

Ditto! X2!!

[bobsallyh]

If Honda would bring out an RV onboard genny that would fit in the compartments that RVs are built with, Onan would be OUT of the RV business.

[Bobbo]

We are considering adding an "annex" to our Class C. We are thinking of getting a tiny travel trailer. Either a T@B or a 13' Scamp. If we do I am going to get a Yamaha 2400 for it.

[big_whitey]

Honda

[raroberts]

I had a Generac 5.5 in my trailer for 5 years and it the engine seized. I could not get replacement parts and no one work on it. Generac has not made generators for trailers for several years. I got a new Onan 5.5 and it is quieter than the Generac but can't vouch for reliability yet. I couldn't get anything but Onan to replace my Generac.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

The old 6.5 NH with stator winding starter, saturated field regulation and 1,800 RPM was a great design. Blame outsourcing. The market of pure 100% made in USA products has shrunk to almost nothing. Every company's executives and share holders want to be wealthy - no matter what it takes.

[KJINTF]

I too agree

My long gone 1987 Motor Home had a very nice Onan 4Kwatt genset with 2 cylinders a pressurized oil system and a spin on oil filter. Our current 2009 Motor Home came with a POS ONAN 4Ky single cylinder splash oil system and two defective fuel pumps within the first two years.

I for one would be happy to pay additional to receive a higher quality genset

[fourthclassC]

I agree entirely. Onan's stink. I would never have one if it did not come with the current unit. A poor performer compared to almost all other brands. Engine and generator