Buying a generator need advice!

The Chinese generators... I read that thread on RV.net too and last year I told everyone at the campground in SC about it too. Problem was that we couldn't find any for months and I finally scored two of the PowerPro 3500's at the local Pep Boys for $299/ea. They had a 220volt outlet and I made an adapter from the twist lock to the rv plug. It ran my A/C fine but had trouble starting the microwave at the same time. They had a huge muffler and a Honda knockoff engine so were very quiet, almost as much as the Honda's. They ran at 3600rpm so they used a bit more fuel too...about 3 times the fuel as a matter of fact.
I sold one to my next door neighbor the first day and two days later I sold the other one to another friend after I wrenched my back moving the 100 lbs that they weighed. The last one got permanently mounted in the front compartment of his 40' 5th wheel. He fabricated an external exhaust pipe and fuel system and has used this generator on several trips in the last year.

Some of these guys got rain checks and one morning a buddy knocked on my door saying that Pep Boys had called and they had more in stock, did I want to go. I ended up buying my third unit and my wife was none too happy when she found out, after all I already had the Hondas that I paid $1751 for... why did I need another generator. "Because they're neat" just wasn't good enough for her but I loaded it in the front compartment and when we got to Iowa I showed it to my uncle. He had a Generac that would break your eardrums at 40 paces...when I cranked that PowerPro he immediatley loaded that Generac in his truck and took it to town and sold it to a guy that he knew was looking for one. In fact when he cranked it for the guy I made sure that I was well away from that miserably loud SOB. BTW, he had put a Toyota muffler on it and it was still ungodly loud.

Recently some high winds have caused power outages which aren't really a concern this time of the year with the camper but I loose the internet and that torques me. So I pull out one of the Hondas and have the camper back online in about 3 minutes. I have to plug a light into the power pole to see when power is back on. I switch the refer and water heater to gas while running on the generators.

I could go on but I think that you get the idea... the Hondas are the way to go and I'd buy them again if I need to.

Recently I was in my local RV parts house and noticed that he was selling the Kipor line of Honda clones. From what I've heard these are supposed to be pretty good too. You can find them on Ebay.

I have there 2,000 watt. inverter genset, and i really like it. It gets many uses here on the farm.

Honda gensets are quieter, use less fuel and have longer oil change intervals than the cheapo units.

Robert

I think I"m leaning towards honda 3000 EU series but HOLY CR@P Honda sure is proud of "em!! The one other thing that I would like is to be able to run on LP. I did a quick search for conversion kits but didn"t find any for the EU series.

Someone mentioned the Chineese knock offs- This unit would probably only see 150-200 hours per year, not that much really, but I don"t want to be messing with the thing setting up the camper @ 10pm in the dark! and the wife needs to be able to use it too.
Thanks for all your ideas lots of things I didn"t think of.

I don't know what my AC is rated for BTUs, but I have a 34 foot fifth wheel, the AC is more than adequate, and if I recall correctly, from when I was shopping for a generator, it has a start up draw of 19A

A 3KW generator is plenty.

And check out Mayberry's. I have no affiliation with them except I bought the generator and a backpack blower from them because the prices where unbeatable, and their service was fine as can be.

I have a 3000w Honda EU machine that I am very happy with. It runs my AC fine - you should check your AC to see its requirement for start-up amps. 3000w is about 25 amps at 120v - I am guessing that will be plenty for you (note the continuous output rating for the generator is about 2750w).

I hadn't though about dab's idea of getting 2 2000w machines and hooking them together. That would also give you some 220v power. Alone these Honda machines are just 110v.

I bought mine "on the net" from a Mayberry's, which is a power equipment dealer in NJ.

Link

They sold it to me for much less than I could get it locally, even though I gave local folks the chance to match it or even come close - they could not.

Good luck

Soundguy

A lot of people run air conditioners on the Honda and Yamaha 3000 watt inverter type generators. An air conditioner on a 20 amp circuit should only draw 16 amps (80% of breaker rating)under full load, which is 1920 watts (ignoring power factor).

The issue comes in when you try to start the air conditioner, and the generator doesn't have enough surge capacity. You can fix that with a soft start kit for your air conditioner (see your local RV dealer if you have a problem starting the AC on the generator). Once its running it doesn't take that much power to keep it running.

One thing to keep in mind when buying a non-RV generator is that the rated output is at 240 volts, which means you can only draw half the rated power at 120 volts. Some of the newer generators come with a provision to put the windings in parallel rather than series, which gives the full output at 120 volts. I saw this feature on one of the e-cheapo Chinese knockoff generators at Costco not too long ago.

The bigger generators like you see on motorhomes typically have two 120 volt output circuits. I had an older motor home with a 6.5 kW Onan. It had two 120 volt circuits, and ran one air conditioner off of each one. We could only run one air conditioner at a time (switch selectable) on shore power, which was a 30 amp, 120 volt circuit.

The Honda & Yamaha generators are nice, but really expensive. Some of them also have electric start. I have an older 750 watt Honda that will run everything in the trailer except the microwave and air conditioner, and you can't hardly hear it running. Some day I'll get a real RV generator! We also have one of the Lowes special 5.5 kW generators, which runs everything of off one side of the 240 volt output just fine but is way too noisy to use in a campground. For camping we use it mostly on our land in the mountains where we're quite a distance from the nearest neighbor, and then only when we need the air conditioning or microwave.

If you really want to research generators, go to RV.net and read some of the threads on the tech board. There's one that addresses these Chinese knockoff generators thats several hundred posts long. Believe it or not, most people who have them are happy with their performance, and they appear to be a great cheap alternative if you're not using it day in & day out. Have no personal experience with them, though.

One final bit of advice, don't count on a bigger muffler to bring the noise level down very far. A lot of the noise from these generators is mechanical, not from the exhaust. That's why the really quiet ones are fully enclosed.

Keith

Soundguy