CUMMINS ONAN RV GAS GENERATORS - ULTIMATE MAINT. GUIDE - Part 1

oh man come on baby not now oh jeez what's the matter with this thing come on baby start start have you ever had this happen to you today in part one of our three-part series we're going to cover the basic maintenance items you should be doing to your generator every year details coming up on rv street okay let's get right to it performing your annual maintenance before you start your next rv traveling season we do ours in the winter maybe it'll spill over a little bit into the spring but before we get on the road we take care of everything that needs to be done for the year you don't want to wait until something doesn't work and then decide to deal with it be proactive that way the entire rv and the generator is ready to go there's a lot to know about taking care of these generators so it will deliver the power that you need when you need it these maintenance things are not hard to learn nor are they particularly difficult to do and so in order to cover everything you need to know i decided to break this up into a three-part series if i put this all in one video it turned out to be way too long today we're going to deal with part one the basic annual maintenance you should do every year part two is going to be a more detailed look at all the different parts and areas you need to know about their maintenance schedule and some troubleshooting tips part three is going to cover fuel tips the importance of proper exercising and some safety tips just another little quick thing here before we get started if you just watched today's video part one you're going to miss out on a lot of really important stuff so i highly encourage you to watch all three parts of this series i promise you there's going to be a lot of important information in this series even if you have a little bit different generator than we do there's going to be something in here for everybody so stay tuned for the other two videos coming out so let's get started with part one basic maintenance you should do every year we have a coming zone in rv 5500 watt marquee gold generator the marquee gold series generator covers spec models hg jaa through hg jaf we have the hgjab e series but all of these generators are very similar and are very common in the rv world as you know your generator is something that you want to work when you need it our generator right here is uh 10 years old and has about 1200 hours on it okay so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to clean the outside i use a brake cleaner and some paper towels i may also use a screwdriver to kind of get down in some tight areas because you're going to get a lot of dirt there may be a little oil in here and i like having a clean generator i do this every year and it also will help it run cooler you could also use a degreaser a foaming degreaser or a different type of engine degreaser on here because i'm also going to be using this to clean my electrical contacts so i have one can to do multiple things so let's start cleaning i'm going to put my little tip on the end here and i'm just going to start spraying in here and breaking up some of this oil and deposits i keep mine pretty clean it doesn't take very much for me to clean this thing then i'm just going to start cleaning it so i'm just continuing here and in these tight areas like i said i'll just take a screwdriver and i'll stick it back in there where i can't reach with my hands you see that and just get all that off of there it's good to get all this grease off it makes your generator nice and clean easy to work on it makes it run cooler and of course when it's clean if you ever run into a problem and all of a sudden you look underneath here and you happen to see oil leaking somewhere you're like ah there's where the problem is it's because it's clean and once you get an oil leak or if anything like that happened it easily shows up and remember every time you're using stuff like this like brake cleaner or something like that you always want to be wearing eye protection and gloves if this stuff ever you know if you ever hit anything and it bounced back into your eyes uh it's gonna it's gonna burn so i'm wearing my glasses but i just thought i'd remind you of that okay so that is looking really really good but as you can see on some of these other areas you see like right in here see all this little dust you get i mean we take these rvs all over the place right boondocking and not on these roads and this is all in the back of the motorhome and so you're going to see even like back here let me show you you see how you get dirt and dust all up on top of all here so what i do in this situation i'll just take a damp rag it's not sopping wet it's just damp and now i'll come in here and i'll wipe off all the surface dust and basically you know just like you do in the house do a spring cleaning okay so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to clean the electrical connections that's why i like to use the brake cleaner to clean the engine because i'm going to use the same stuff to do this you know one of the biggest problems about engines or generators or in the house all of a sudden the light won't work or something goes haywire well many many times it's an electrical problem so i like to keep my electrical uh connections in here clean and i protect them right here below the start and uh the breaker box we have our main power connections right there you see that you see how clean mine are i haven't cleaned this since last year but i keep them clean every year so i'm going to go ahead and spray on some brake cleaner to clean that area and you see this little sign right there it says ground that's where the ground is now it's way back in there it's kind of hard to get to you have to actually get to it with a socket and an extension but again i know that's nice and tight but it may be dirty i'm going to go right on top of that ground wire and clean that connection get off any dust get off any grease make sure it's nice and clean the next electrical connection i want to deal with is right here this is the oil pressure switch i'm going to take a paper towel and clean that male connection and then i'm going to take the female part and clean out the inside of that spade connector there and one last area is right here i'm going to remove these two connectors and i'm going to do one at a time so i don't get them mixed up spray a little bit on the paper towel clean the male part clean the female part squirt that in there just to remove any dirt and all that kind of stuff you get the picture right and do the same thing on the other one now that i've cleaned them i want to protect them and this is the same protection that i use on my battery terminals for both the chassis and the house batteries so i just open up the top i lift this up and just a couple of quick shots you see that put a little protection on there i'm going to do the same thing in the ground i'm going to do the same thing here i'm just going to put something in behind here a little protection there put the switch back on i think it's a good practice just to do one at a time one at a time because if you get in a hurry or you get distracted somebody comes up and starts talking to you or whatever you're like okay which wire went where so just do one at a time so there you have it you have all the connections cleaned and protected and we've wiped down the entire generator one little quick tip that i forgot to mention on these gloves that i wear i love these gloves these are not the same gloves that i use when i'm changing out my sewer hoses and all that type of stuff but these are the ones i use when i'm wrenching on stuff because you can you see that texture on there and that texture allows me to really get a good firm grip on my tools and so i don't slip now we're going to change the oil the first thing we're going to do is we're going to start up the generator and let it warm up for about five minutes this is not necessary to do you don't have to warm it up to drain the oil and change out the oil filter it's a practice that i like to do i've been doing it that way all my life on all the different equipment i've worked on it just makes it easier and faster to drain when it's warm [Music] so we've let the generator run for five minutes and let's change the oil so as you can see the first thing i've done is i've slipped a piece of cardboard under the generator and i've gathered all my equipment and all the items that i'm going to need to do this oil change it just keeps things clean and keeps everything right here in front of me so i can just move through this thing very quickly now i have found the easiest way to to do an oil change is just to use a bucket we're going to put the bucket up underneath the generator and we're going to change the filter and drain the oil now i have tried other ways to make this a little simpler for example this is my old oil receptacle you saw me use this when i changed the oil on the coach but on the coach i installed a fumoto valve where i can attach a clear piece of tubing on the phomoto valve and then that just goes right into here and it drains the oil right into the the old oil container makes it really easy you don't have to put it in a pan get it all over the axle then transfer that oil into here and all that you just drain it right into here well as you can see underneath here of where the oil filter and the drain rubber hose is on the bottom of the generator it's a very short hose it's only about like one inch i tried uh thinking about how to attach a femoto valve on that not very easy to do and i thought well you know if i figured out if i look at this long enough i can probably come up with a way to do it but you know what i don't want to make this stuff difficult we only do this once a year okay so another way i tried is i took a piece of clear hose this fits right over that little rubber drain hose that's under the generator okay so that solves that problem i can now drain the oil directly into here but i still have to take off the oil filter which is still going to be a little messy i'm going to show you how i do that though but you know without all this extra equipment and all that i have found the easiest way is just to put a bucket under the generator we're going to drain the oil in here and we're going to drain the oil filter that is full of oil in here okay so now we're on the underside of the generator and here we have the oil filter and the drain tube i was telling you about see this little piece of rubber here so what i do is i just put my bucket right up underneath that way this bucket will catch the oil from here and here so one little trick that i have found about the filter i drill a hole right in the middle of it why did i do that well because it drains the oil out of the filter and that way when i remove this filter it's not as messy the next thing i do is i go back to the front and i open up the drain valve this is the oil drain valve right here by unscrewing this here as it begins to drain below and then i also loosen the cap right here this is the fill cap by loosening the fill cap opening up the drain valve and drilling a hole up underneath on the filter that removes kind of the vacuum that's caused in that area and now the oil is draining into the bucket can you see that it's now draining now we're going to deal with the air filter while everything is draining it's got three clips you got one here one here and one back here up here it has three little clips that it kind of inserts up into so you have to lift it up and pull it down you see that you see those little clips right there see how it's got that little ledge so that has to go up and in and then down so you lift up and remove that and this is the old air filter you simply just remove it and if you look at this air filter you can see how it's dirty you cannot clean these air filters you don't try to blow them out with air you don't try to wash them with soap or water or anything like that when they get dirty you just replace it this is a new air filter and all this stuff like i said will be in our amazon store so you don't have to worry about going on a hunt spending two hours on line trying to find a new parts and all that but of course you know if you have a little bit different version in this you still can use our amazon store you can go to the link below and click our amazon store and find the right parts that you need put them in the cart and check out but look at the difference here's the dirty one that we're gonna change out and here's a clean one you see that difference this is a little over a year old so we're gonna take that and throw it away you just take the new one there is no preparation nothing you have to do here you simply turn it and put it back in but before we do that we're going to take a little bit more brick cleaner and just spray some on a paper towel and come in here and clean this area you can see it's not very dirty but it's always good to just kind of clean these areas out just in case it's dirty okay so the area is clean you take the new air filter you turn it around and you place it in there and you can see it has this raised uh rubber gasket right there this always goes out this part always goes in okay then you take the lid and remember those three little latches there you just put those up underneath there push it down snap it on snap it on snap it on all three clips now are secured the air filter is complete okay the oil is almost finished draining but i wanted to show you before we get up underneath here here is the new oil filter we're going to use is a cummings onan and this is what it looks like okay you can see by the size of my hand that's about the size of it and so when we go up underneath this is what we're going to use okay so the oil has finished draining so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to turn the drain valve back off turning it clockwise this one right here turning it clockwise to where it's just snug that's it so now let's go back under the generator and i'll show you how to change out the oil filter okay so the oil has drained from the filter and our drain hose now we're going to change the oil filter which is right here and as you can see it's recessed way up in there remember the new filter i showed you right here you can see that there's only a small amount that is sticking out and it's very difficult if not impossible to get a hold of this by your hands and unscrew this and i'm a strong guy and i can't even get a hold of that and because it's recessed and it has this screen around it you can't use a conventional ring type oil filter remover there's just not enough room in here to get that tool up in here and undo this filter so what you do is you use these tecton pliers these are the same pliers that you saw joni use when she changed the oil in the coach you know she reached up in there and you know it was a little hard for her so she used these pliers these tecton pliers to just break it loose and then take the filter out well it's the same principle here you see how you can get up in here and get a hold of that filter you always want a counterclockwise solution clockwise to tighten see these jaws right here those jaws really get a hold of that filter up in that really tight area and then you can just begin to unscrew it now once it gets loose like it is right now now you can take and do it by hand and as i unscrew it you see that oil now that goes right into the bucket you see that there was some remaining oil up in that chamber it's going to go through the filter and then i just take it out and turn it upside down and let the rest of it drain out that's why using a bucket is just the easiest way you don't have to worry about it spilling everywhere and now once it's drained out i just take the oil filter i turn it up and i put it in a plastic bag and seal it up now i'm going to move the bucket out of the way the next step i'm going to do is i'm going to take some paper towels and i'm just going to go up in that cavity and i'm going to wipe off any additional oil that's sitting up in there you want to make sure that you look up in there when you're done doing this and make sure that a piece of paper towel or anything didn't rip off and got stuck up in there see that up in there it's all nice and clean okay so the next thing we're going to do is i'm going to fill the oil filter up three quarters of the way with oil before i insert and tighten it back up and the reason i do that is adding new oil to a generator goes very very slowly it's nothing like adding it to a car and i'm going to be using royal purple this is what i use a standard straight 30 weight synthetic oil and before any of you guys panic not to worry i'm going to cover the oils in just a few minutes but this is the one that i use it's straight 30 weight and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come in here and i'm going to add three quarters just let that sit down in there and the reason i do this is because two reasons helps me speed up adding the oil to the generator but when i first start it back up the filter has already got a lot of oil in it and that's really good for the generator so that's got oil in it now now i'm going to take and dab that little puddle that you see there and i'm going to wipe oil on top of that seal and before i forget i want to add one more little tip here when you pull out the old oil filter always look at the top and make sure that the ring the oil ring this seal right here came out with the old oil filter you do not want to pull this oil filter out and this thing happened to separate and it stuck up inside then you go put another oil filter on top of the old seal i've never had that happen to me but i know it's happened to some so when you pull this out make sure that the seal is still intact okay so we have our oil filter filled up i don't know half maybe three quarters of the way full of oil i've wiped the seal with a little bit of oil and now we're going to take it by hand and we're going to push it up in there and we're going to start to tighten it by hand now i know a lot of you have arthritis or maybe you just don't have the grip that you used to you know when you were young and the rule of thumb with filters with oil filters is you want to tighten it till it's snug and then just a hair more and then as the generator runs and it heats and cools and heats and cools that o-ring that i showed you it will seal it will set but those of you who have a hard time you just don't have the grip that you used to when you get it as tight as you can and if that's you know you're just like oh man my hand hurts what you can do in those cases is take your tecton uh pliers again and put them up in here and give it that extra little snug okay one last tip about that oil filter and giving it just a little snug with this if you have arthritic hands or you don't have the right grip just remember the key word that i said you want to bring it just snug okay you don't want to get a hold of that filter and really just crank on and get that thing so tight it won't go anymore you do not want to do that with a with an oil filter so you can see here's my old oil and what i do is i just put a funnel here and i transfer it to my recycling container and then i'll take this container to walmart or any auto parts store or anything like that and they'll they'll drain this and empty this for free so that's how you get rid of the old oil then i just clean out the bucket real good and i use it for multiple other things so this generator takes two quarts of oil and as you saw i already put you know two-thirds of an oil filter full of it already in there so we have closed our drain valve right here and this is where you add oil you can even see that this is the dipstick you can see where it says full or add that goes in here and you tighten it up and this is where you add oil onan recommends the following weights of oil 1540 all year round seasons in liquid or cooled generators this generator right here is air cooled so i could use a 1540 but straight 30 which is what i use is the preferred summer grade for optimum oil consumption in air cooled generators so this is what i use all the time in ours 30 weight i always use synthetic now you can use a mobile one synthetic but i'll tell you my experience trying to find straight synthetic 30 weight and especially in just quartz is hard to find so i use royal purple 30 weight it's easy to find i can find it in single quartz and i only need two of them it's a robust synthetic oil for this application but i'll say i know there's a lot of lucas and amsoil fans out there so by all means you can use those brands too i just happen to prefer royal purple now these gas generators they do burn some oil okay they're built that way they're supposed to burn oil so that's why it's always a good practice every time you get ready to use your generator unscrew the cap and look at the dipstick and make sure that it has plenty of oil if it doesn't add some so let's go ahead and start adding the oil what i do as a general practice is i'll just put some paper towels right up underneath here just in case i get a little drippage i'll put my funnel up in here and i'll start adding oil now remember what i told you you add it very slow about that much and let it seep down you know how it is with a car you can just sit there and go glug glug and it just goes it goes straight on down you don't have to wait and let it kind of work its way down with these generators you do and especially as it gets fuller with oil so now you take the dipstick and you put it back in and whenever you check the oil level you want to make sure that the cap is all the way down then when you want to check it you unscrew it and you can see it's right at the full mark we have one last thing to do and that's clean the spark arrestor where is the spark arrester well it's under the generator okay so here's where we were changing out the oil filter and the drain plug or the drain line i should say if you just come right over here and way up there this right here is your spark arrester we need to remove that if you've never done this before that thing can be pretty tight in there so that's when you take some penetrating fluid you see that right there and you come up and you spray just a couple little dabs right around the threads up there and let it just sit there for i don't know 30 minutes an hour whatever allow the penetrating fluid to get up in there and loosen that so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to take my crescent wrench and you can see how it's a square plug that's why we're using this wrench and we're going to start counter-clockwise and so we're going to loosen this plug and while i'm loosening that for inquiring mines fyi a spark arrestor plays a critical role to prevent them from igniting grasses and leaves okay we park these things over grass and dry leaves and all this kind of stuff and the spark arrester keeps the rv generator from igniting all that dry grass that may be underneath it so by cleaning the spark arrester it blows out all the accumulated soot that gets inside there over time so i'm going to reach up in there and that's what it looks like it's a little plug has a square tip on it so now that we've removed this let me show you what we're going to do next okay so we got the plug out and we're going to start the generator we're going to put the door back on and we're going to allow that soot that accumulated soot to blow out of that area remember whenever you do this don't be parked over a bunch of dry grass that could catch fire or leaves or anything like that okay so we started it up and i let it run for about five minutes here's another little trick that i want to show you on how to make this plug get out easy from now on so you take the plug and of course my brass bristle brush and i use some anti-seize or never seas uh i have this in my store too you put a little bit on the threads and screws bolts what have you so the next time you come back a year or two or three or five whatever it is it's just like its name says it never ceases and that's all you need is just a little tiny bit and so now i'm gonna go back and put this back up in there and tighten it there is no torque on this uh you again it's like everything else we've done you use that crescent wrench and tighten it and tighten it and then get it snug that's all you do when you go to go put this back up in there it's going to be hot up there we just got through running the generator so you have two choices you can either just let it sit until the generator totally cools and it's cool to get up in there and start to wrench and tighten this thing or you can put on some better gloves this is what i choose to do i mean i want to get this thing done so just keep that aware when you're around that area after you've run the generator if you have an air-cooled generator an rv generator like we do keep the door in place and close when you're running this now of course if you're troubleshooting some things or you're doing maintenance and turning it on and off and you know it's okay to leave it off for when you're doing those type of things but under normal operating conditions you always want to take the door and put it on and snap it into place having the door on allows the generator to cool properly okay this applies to air cooled generators as you can see i added handles to my generator door and the reason i did that is without the handles i had to reach in behind this lip and pull it back and it would hit my hand on the back of this ledge and i'd end up always knocking and dinging and bleeding my back of my hands so i added these two handles so now i can just grab it and put my palms up here and just pop it right off you guys have heard me say over and over again in all of my videos if you don't have your user manuals and your service manuals for all of your equipment including the generator you need to get those now for your particular model you do not want to wait until something happens what happens a lot of times is people will wait and wait and well i'll get it later and then they find it's too hard to find them or they no longer produce them get your manuals now i'm going to give you a link to where you can get your particular cummings onan gas generator manual so make sure you go down there and look for that if you don't have your manual already as you saw in my previous critical high priority things every rver should be carrying with them at all times one of those things was what a little test question it was spare parts critical spare parts when your generator if it goes bad you want to be able to get your hands on those parts right now because you need this right now so i highly recommend that you carry these critical spare parts i carry a spare fuel filter a fuel pump an oil filter two quarts of oil and an oil pressure switch remember today's video covered your basic annual maintenance that you should do every year don't forget to watch part two and part three that'll be coming out in the next few weeks because if you don't watch those videos you're going to be missing out on a lot of very important information that goes all along with what we did today now i know many of you will have a little bit different model than we do but i hope this three-part series and this one here the one that is part one that we cover today will encourage you and motivate you to do this stuff every year if you do it's going to prevent a lot if not most any problems down the road and it's going to keep your generator running in top-notch condition when you need it it's going to start and it's going to deliver power to those of you out there that have maybe devised some of your own special tips and tricks that you've learned along the way that makes your gas rv generator maintenance a lot easier please give those comments below but when you do make sure you specify the kind of generator you have and then explain the tip or trick that you've learned that way we all can learn i mean it's all about learning and helping each other right don't forget i've got a ton of other upgrade and maintenance videos in our playlist i highly encourage that you watch those i mean you do not have to go to the school of hard knocks okay so if you'll go right up here and go to that playlist click view list and you'll see all types of videos there very similar to these kind of things and who knows you may find something there that will really be helpful to you everything that i've shown you here is in our amazon store i'll have all the parts and everything that we used here in that's in our store but even if you have a little bit different generator and you have a little bit different part numbers you can still click our amazon store link and that will take you to amazon and then look and search for your particular parts put them in the cart and check out and not only just these parts but any gear that you need while you're rving by using our store it's a great way to say thank you martin thank you for taking the time to show us these videos because we make a very small little commission when you use our store but you know what when you all use it or many use it it really helps out and it's a great way to say thank you oh one mother thing if you like this kind of stuff how to fix stuff how to maintain stuff don't forget to subscribe subscribing is free just hit the subscribe button and don't forget to ring the bell off to the right so you'll be notified the next time i upload my next video so this is the conclusion of part one of the basic maintenance items you should be taking care of every year so until next time this is rv street stick around [Music] you

Channel: RVstreet

Views: 41,258

Keywords: onan gas generator maintenance, Marquis Gold Series generator tips, Onan oil change, onan air filter change, RV onan electrical problems, onan generator oil pressure switch, onan generator spark arrester cleaning, onan generator won’t start, onan generator trouble shooting, Onan RV 5500 watt Marquis Gold Generator service, RV Onan generator problems, RV onan generator repair, my onan generator stops running, onan RV generator problems, onan electrical problems, RV genset repair

Id: eUOempzy1KE

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021