first post. 2020 Jayco Seismic 4113, Onan 5500 gas generator, and the 50 gallon onboard tank that feeds both the generator and the fuel station we use to fill the Defender at camp.
we park it at the end of November when the elk tags are done and it sits beside the shop until March. last spring the generator would not start for twenty minutes, surged when it did, and the fuel station pump was slow, like a garden hose with somebody standing on it. the shop said varnish in the carb and charged me for a cleaning.
so this winter i want to do it right. three questions:
how often do you exercise it while it sits, and for how long?
full tank with stabilizer, or run the tank low?
and the one that made me look stupid at Moab in october: the generator shut off by itself with the gauge reading about a quarter tank. no code i could read, just stopped. the fuel station still pumped fine. is the generator broken or is that on purpose?
hauls2019 Keystone Fuzion 419 behind a 2019 Silverado 3500HD Duramax, with a Yamaha Wolverine X4 and a Sea-Doo in the garage
the quarter tank one is on purpose. the generator's pickup tube in the tank is shorter than the fuel station's, so the generator runs out first and you never drain the tank dry pumping gas into toys. otherwise you could empty it filling quads at 9 pm and wake up with no furnace fan and no generator to charge the batteries. it is a feature that feels like a failure the first time it happens.
on exercising it, the old rule at our shop was once a month, two hours, with a real load on it. half load or so. the AC in summer, a space heater or two in winter. running it with nothing plugged in does not get it hot enough to do anything useful.
hauls2016 Heartland Cyclone 4005 (shop project) behind a 2017 F-350, a Honda Pioneer 1000 to deer camp
on the slow fuel station: before you blame the pump, find the inline filter. on most of the ones we see in the shop it is a small canister filter on the line between the tank and the 12 volt pump, somewhere under the trailer or behind an access panel in the garage. they clog with the same varnish your carb got, plus whatever was in the gas station's tank in Rifle that day.
cheap part. ten minutes if you can reach it, an hour if you cannot. keep a rag and a coffee can under it because it will drip.
hauls2019 Grand Design Momentum 350M behind a 2018 GMC Sierra 3500HD, two Sportsman 570s
Casper checking in, where winter storage means it is ten below by the shop for a week straight.
i fill the tank with non ethanol premium before it gets parked, add stabilizer to the whole tank, run the generator 20 minutes so the treated gas gets into the carb, and then exercise it once a month with a space heater plugged in inside the trailer. the month i skipped last year was the month it would not start.
one more for cold country: let it run a few minutes before you put the load on. a cold Onan with the full load dumped on it right away stumbles and sometimes quits, and then you are out there in a coat wondering what broke.
well, jolene, thank you. the quarter tank thing bothered me for three weeks.
dale, found the filter. it was behind a panel on the curb side wall of the garage, right where the Defender's tire rubs. clear plastic housing and the element inside was brown. the parts store did not have the exact one so i ordered it from the Cummins Onan dealer list on the cummins site and it is supposed to show up next week.
plan for the winter then: fill with non ethanol, stabilizer in the tank, monthly two hour run with both space heaters going, and a log taped inside the generator door so i stop guessing whether i did it.
hauls2022 Forest River XLR Nitro 351 behind a 2019 F-350 6.7, Can-Am Maverick X3
funny reading this from Yuma, where winter is when we use ours. we store in summer, when it is 115 and nobody is going to the dunes.
same rules work in reverse though. the varnish happens faster in the heat if anything. and do the monthly run with the AC on, not the microwave for two minutes. our Onan sat with old gas through a July once and it took a carb to fix it.
filter is in. the old one was so plugged i could barely blow through it. the fuel station now fills a five gallon can in about the time it takes me to find the cap for the next one, which is how it was when we bought it.
first exercise run was saturday. 22 degrees out, started on the second try, i gave it three minutes before turning on both space heaters and it ran two hours without a hiccup. the log in the generator door has one line on it so far. we will see how long i keep that up.
