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Onan generator

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kitestrings:
We just bought this generator.  It looks quite bit better since degreasing things.  It came out of a panel truck with a lift and the hydraulics must of been leaking on it for a while.


The good thing is I needed a control board for ours and this unit is an exact match down to the motor spec.  And, it's also got only 1,300 hours on it.  I pulled off the pump and remote relays and got it charging the battery (just a misplaced wire), and added a 120V duplex and a 240V 20A twist-lock.  I mounted it on a pallet this w/e so I could move it around a bit easy.  It runs really, really good.

I swapped boards and that fixed ours, but I'd sure like to fix this one.  They still sell replacements, but they're $400+, nearly what I've got into the thing.  This board functions as long as the battery is way up, or I boost it on a small charger.  At rest voltage it won't actuate the solenoid.  They're soft-potted, and so far they've led me to believe they can't, or aren't fixed normally.

SparWeb:
Doesn't mean that with a little ingenuity (and more than a little stubbornness) you can't fix the old board.  Any obvious indication why it failed?
It will be a lot easier to try-it-and-see when you have a whole spare generator to use!

OperaHouse:
Ebay has some pretty cheap AVR's, but they are short on technical details.

kitestrings:
No cartwheels just yet, but it appears that the control board may be okay.  I had tried cleaning and re-crimping all external connections to the board, but some thing unusual happen the some weeks back.  The generator was running while I was puttering in my shop.  I went into the basement, where I'd also been working and when I came out the unit had shut down, on its own.  I don't know that I'd ever seen this before, unless we were out of fuel or something along those lines.

I immediately had some suspicions.  When I attempted to restart, it fired up normally, but stopped as soon as I released the starter switch.  I'd recalled reading about this during prior trouble-shooting efforts.  The unit has a low pressure oil switch.


So, there are/were a number of possibilities: 1) bad connection (the switch is right above the oil filter), 2) low oil pressure, 3) bad/stuck switch module, 4) problem with oil bi-pass valve.  Anyhow, when I grounded the switch, the generator started normally and stayed running.  I drained and replaced the oil (it was not low), cleaned the spade terminal at the switch and fired things back up.  It has run normally since, and so I tried swapping the original control board back in place and similarly it appears to working as intended.

I'm going to keep an eye on it, because with nearly 10,000 hours on the engine I suppose low oil (due to wear) is a real possibility.  I've had it running several days, all day; I'm cautiously optimistic.

~ks

george65:

Could have been dirty oil.

My father bought a new ride on and had it a while then it failed to start.  He and his mechanic that works for him and has a lot of experience in small engines couldn't get it going. Finally they rang the shop and first thing the guy said was have you changed the oil?

They did and off it went.  They have a sensor that looks at the colour of the oil and if it doesn't like it.....
My father is pretty onto oil changes but the guy at the shop said it can depend on teh oil, amount of cold starts and load etc.
Few weeks later the mechanics chipper suddenly wouldn't start. Changed the oil, bingo.

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