Good Sam Club Open Roads Forum: Overload built-in Onan gen. without popping a breaker?


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joebedford

Home for the summer.

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Joined: 09/03/2003

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Posted: 03/06/23 06:46am

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I was testing my gas-powered Onan 5500 the other day. I was running both air conditioners and the water heater. It seemed to be handling the load well but after 20 minutes, it just stopped - no sputtering or anything - just spun down suddenly.

I was able to restart it and it worked OK but I'm wondering what would cause it to stop like that. There's plenty of oil (in fact maybe a bit too much oil).

No breakers were popped.

CA Traveler

The Western States

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Posted: 03/06/23 06:53am

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Did it blink a fault code?

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dougrainer

Carrolton, Texas

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Posted: 03/06/23 08:33am

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too much oil will kill a Onan Gas genset. Doug

pianotuna

Regina, SK, Canada

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Posted: 03/06/23 02:16pm

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Hi joebedford,

Did you monitor the voltage?

Some generators will run overloaded for a while-and then shut down. I don't recommend doing this.

Regards, Don
My ride is a 28 foot Class C, 256 watts solar, 556 amp-hours of Telcom jars, 3000 watt Magnum hybrid inverter, Sola Basic Autoformer, Microair Easy Start.

joebedford

Home for the summer.

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Posted: 03/06/23 03:33pm

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There were no fault codes.

I didn't monitor the voltage because it seemed to be fine until it wasn't.

I'll check the voltage next time I run it under load.

When you say "kill" do you mean make it stop or break it?

dougrainer

Carrolton, Texas

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Posted: 03/06/23 05:06pm

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joebedford wrote:

Bad choice of words. Yes, it may stop running if too much oil. It can cause the LOPKO(oil pressure switch) to not see the pressure. Doug

greenno

Clairemont Cal.

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Posted: 03/06/23 06:58pm

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Run it again with less load and see if the problem persists.

wa8yxm

Davison Michigan (East of Flint)

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Posted: 03/07/23 05:29am

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My Onon was a 5500 Two 30 amp breakers. 30 amps times 120 volts is 3600 times two (Two breakers) is 7200 A bit more than a 5500 can output.

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