Generator

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by russellmania01

Ok I finally got back to the generator, had to wait for it to warm up. Replaced both batteries, load test showed the house battery was bad and it showed the chassis battery was weak. That didn’t fix the problem. I took some pictures that I will add. There is one white wire and I don’t know where it goes. The two with the clips go on top of the solenoid but the one that goes on a bolt is the one I don’t know where it goes. The original picture I took doesn’t show it attaches to the solenoid. Any assistance would be appreciated.

The white wire goes on that post on the right, I can see it when I look at my desktop screen

[russellmania01]

Ok, another test down. I do have spark, felt a little bit of it myself. Next will be the carburetor, have to figure out what I’m going to do there. Thanks for all the help, I will keep you informed.

[Bill Johnson]

Watch a video for a lawn tractor carburetor if you can't find one for Onan on YouTube

[Ttlanders]

Had same thing happen to mine years ago and ordered a new carburetor for it and started adding stabilizer in fuel before winter and never had problem again. The ethanol ruins small carbs

[Parrott]

Give it a little shot of starting fluid. May get it running and clear the carb out.

[Kevin Cooper]

Most likely your jets in your carb are clogged with gel from alcohol fuel. Get some starting either, take off your air cleaner cover, give it a small spray into the filter when it starts cranking. If it starts and shuts off everything else is good. And your carb is plugged. Most techs will only replace the carb.

[Kevin Cooper]

This may help.
https://seafoamworks.com/uploads/pub...medUp-Carb.pdf

[russellmania01]

I got a gallon of fresh gas and put some sea foam in it and the gas thats going in is the fresh gas. I was able to get it to run for about 30 seconds. It’s been sitting for a couple days so we will see what happens.

[Parrott]

Originally Posted by Kevin Cooper

Most likely your jets in your carb are clogged with gel from alcohol fuel. Get some starting either, take off your air cleaner cover, give it a small spray into the filter when it starts cranking. If it starts and shuts off everything else is good. And your carb is plugged. Most techs will only replace the carb.

Reason being most time, paying a tech $120 an hour to clean the carb, and it may not fix it, it’s cheaper to just replace. DIY is cheaper to clean it if you can.

[Kevin Cooper]

Make sure that you drain the gas from the bowl first. There is a drain screw on the bottom of the bowl. Otherwise, still old gas in it.

[Seadog]

I just noticed this post and didn’t see it resolved. If you had spark and a shot of ether didn’t make it sputter at least, your problem may be deeper. Also you can do a compression check and eliminate some things. I had a problem that took me awhile to trace down with the help of level 2 Onan support. If you haven’t resolved this get back to me and I will let you know what may need done. The generator will need removed to diagnose further.

[russellmania01]

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything about it lately. I’ve been trying to get my truck fixed. It is partially resolved, I ran a gallon of fresh gas through it with sea foam and also put some in the gas tank of the rv. It still runs a little rough but, is getting better and will run for an hour. Am going to fire it up again this weekend. I didn’t exercise it the way that I was supposed to, in my feeble mind I thought that the less it ran the better it was. I learned a lot from this experience, these things teach us whether we want to learn or not. Thanks to all of you that helped me out.

[Seadog]

Ok. Mine was fairly new and symptoms were hard starting, no power, some backfiring through carb. Indicative of lean fuel but ended up being a timing problem due to a shaft alignment issue. Good luck!

[russellmania01]

The generator will start and will run for about thirty to forty five minutes and shut itself off. The is at half tank of fuel, I put two small cans of sea foam in the tank. I’m hoping maybe it needs a simple adjustment but I don’t know that much about it.

Problem number two: something is pulling from the battery and I don’t know what. I had a battery cutoff on it and it started acting up. Sometimes when I tried to start it it would go dead and I would have to go out and unscrew it and screw it back in to get it to work. Don’t know where to start to try and figure out what is pulling from the battery. Any help would be appreciated.

[Kevin Cooper]

Is there a flashing error light? Does it start again immediately? If no, check it for spark. If no, bad magneto. If spark, press stop, is the pump running? How accurate is fuel gauge? Filled tank lately? Check the oil level, too high or low can make it shut down. Someone else on another thread, filled the tank, changed the oil, and it now runs like designed to. Mine has been hard to start, and lopes at first. I just put 91 octane no alcohol gas in the tank. About 50 gallons in 15 gallons in tank. Gen starts quickly now and runs smooth when it starts.