Miniature Diesel Generator Diagnose, Repair, Test ONAN RV QD3200

okay welcome back that's something a little bit different but kind of the same today this is a Onan Cummins cube D 3200 diesel generator set this unit came out of a kind of a like a commercial use RV I think they were running like a little health clinic out of this thing so I don't have much of a backstory on it it was given to me recently this was a take out from him from an RV warranty replacement so something is wrong with this unit to the point where it was still under warranty and Cummins just said here taking in one it's not worth repairing so I don't know a whole lot about these I've never worked on one before salt sitting in the in shop and I inquired about it so I kind of like the shape it's it's really compact it's roughly eighteen by eighteen by thirty a little rectangle here so what's it's a low output the 3.2 kilowatt 120 volt only it looks like but let's open it up here and see what's inside so it looks like it's a little single-cylinder hats engine the Cummins tag serial number mate in 2013 not all that old 3.2 kilowatt 120 volt 3100 rpm that's interesting so that's neither slow-speed 1,800 or a screamer at 3600 hmm I don't know if they're driving a generator via a belt in here it's awful small that's a lot of these Cummins RV units do that at least the more modern ones they'll run the engine it's something like you know 3200 rpm just to keep the noise down but then they'll they'll have a pulley ratio and a belt setup to drive a generator head at 3,600 rpm so interesting don't think there's enough room for a belt in there mmm could this be an inverter generator no no let's uh let's pop the cover off here and see what's inside before we actually hook up power to it and see if it'll run no need no need to do any more damage that it's already done I forgot to mention here so there's really no controls on the generator itself it looks like there's a gay push-button the circuit breaker here of some kind that looks like just maybe just a DC power disconnect and this little panel here I would imagine we've mounted inside the RV or the truck or whatever this is trail generator set was mounted to little HMI so again really simple start button stop button and I guess a oil level warning in 2013 there and then a cable to connect the two alright well I popped the top cover off and these two side panels so let's take a look inside here we've got a lot of it's a sound proofing insulation going on here and it looks like this is definitely an inverter based generator so looking down the top of the engine here got cooling fan and down there you can see what a bunch of a bunch of sync single coils Wham there let's see they stationery yep so what we're gonna have is a big stator here wound on the coils and then a ring of magnets on the engine flywheel this is probably making a three-phase power here to feed the inverter big inverter board over here this light may be a little bit harsh big inverter board something a little screwy looking down there you zoom in on that will focus and that looks like some silicone on that clamp or that knot clamp that wire connector it's a little strange okay decent-sized muffler get some looks like fiberglass wool insulation here for the heat resistance a cylinder-head of the engines kind of I don't know what that is I'd be like a lifting strap guess so lifting strap for the engine sorry about the ambient noise sounds like somebody's having a tree chipped up across the road there so it's a pretty tidy little unit actually let's get a closer look at the engine here I got a fuel filter over here we'll fill dipstick let's see what it looks like it's in the it's in the operating range you know it smells like fuel not really fuel but almost like a combustion blow blow blow by so we may have an engine problem here I wonder how many hours are on this thing when we hook up a battery to it that that HMI might might indicate the engine towers over under this panel we have little load block here terminal block for our output and just single-phase 120 volt battery positive stud and there's another little potted board down here this is probably just well yeah this is what the what that HMI plugs into it looks like with that what is that a 10 pin connector okay okay and a fuel pump down there pretty standard own and stuff they're coming down and stuff mmm let's uh let's take a look under the air filter cover here see what that looks like it's not really much to service on this what does it say here will capacity 1.1 quarts point 7 quarts oil change so I guess they assume you're not gonna get it all out so but if you feel end up for the first time its 1.1 quartz it is not very much oil your filter a little bit difficult to do one-handed here they go to that what's black I'm not a good sign is it genuine hats diesel part there Wow again smells like combustion blow by exhaust and unburnt fuel okay where we got down there looks like a glow plug or another glow plug but a intake heater and a lot of a lot of oily Saudi slime yeah not a good sign looks like we're gonna have some engine problem here what's the what's the Seahawks tip what's that look like in there wow that is seriously coked up man all right well looks like we may have an engine problem here I think at this point let's hook a battery up to it and try to power it up and see what it does look some fuel up to it and see if it does anything all right well here's our little test setup got a bucket of fuel here just hook up some lines here supplying our turn at the little HMI panel connected on both ends there so batteries also connected push this little breaker here see if anything happens they got here nothing push on 369 hours okay huh looks like we're dripping fuel here I think I hear the fuel pump going feels like it's going let me put a clamp on that line here I guess okay so the pump is stopped so anytime anytime you have the display on slash I guess generator on you get fuel pump action okay let me put a clamp on that okay let's try this again clamps on the fuel lines now turn this back on fuel pump running yep and I'm assuming based on the fact that we have fuel leaking out the return that it is circulating I imagine there's gonna be some air in the lines if it does start it's probably gonna be a little ornery but let's see what it does here seems like we definitely have it any problem I think we're just gonna stop cranky now no reason to continue with that popping out the intake so bad hmm how many hours we have on here 369 okay wonder if it's ever had the valves adjusted off to pull up the manual on Quick Serve for this thing and see see what the maintenance interval is for the valves if there even is one that would assume that there is given this little air-cooled engine it's probably an initial 250 or so our valve adjustment but based on based on the amount of soot in that exhaust and the smell on the oil we might have a see more serious problem here and it doesn't look like it's gonna be the easiest to pop that valve cover off we're gonna take the exhaust off and this baffle here hopefully that can be removed separately it looks like it can if you remove this baffle in the muffler we could probably access that the rocker arms oh okay well here's here's the expert come over here and let's look let's hear your diagnosis ah yeah yeah it looks like Eric well you want to hear it okay okay yeah yeah it looks like we are not definitely not sealing where intake valves are definitely not sealing we're getting it almost seems like we're getting partial combustion and then blowing back out the intake so definitely first order of business is pop that rocker cover off and see what our valve adjustments look like well it's starting to get dark out but I did manage to get the muffler and the that heat shield off mufflers fairly large he might have been able to tell earlier I had a heck of a time getting the piece of flex off between the cylinder head in this elbow it was glued on with this a red I guess almost like a high high temperature RTV I'm a little ashamed to show this but I kind of mangled the the Flex a little bit very very thin like a stainless very flexible I can almost squeeze it with my fingers so I should be able to straighten that out I don't think any time was done so mufflers out the baffles out and I popped the rocker cover off and this is what I find so oops I read that we have push rod which is hopped out from the exhaust valve rocker arm hmm interesting my hands are a bit dirty but I guess it's not the end of the world reach in here and thread this rocker arm and take a look see there's that nut and leave that right there pull this rocker arm out when you zoom me out first let's take a look here oops sorry and it does not look at all damaged interesting getting dirty hands I hate working on engines with dirty hands but said it's getting dark and I want to make finish up the first part of this video here so sauced valve rocker looks okay what does it what's missing here oh I believe it a little bridge I guess you could call it looks like that dropped off right there bridge with two little sorry cheese with two little washers as a spacer and that's what's contacting the valve stem right there there's the where where padding from that set that aside this would be a better angle for you grab a flashlight try to light that area up a bit more so we got our exhaust exhaust valve stem there and rocker arm pivot stud turn this light off and see what the intake valve feels it feel some clearance there I don't know where the pit where the cylinders at or the piston rather and this in the stroke that stud feels fine that's tight that's interesting there's no means to lock these adjustments I wonder if they are like a oh yeah they are right there jeez I'm sorry so there's your adjustment nut and you lock it by tightening that that what looks like a set screw really that's loose in its hole there so you adjust your nut for your valve clearance and run this locking screw in against the stud and that jams the nut or jams the threads rather hmm I wonder if it's possible that that was just not correctly torqued and it vibrated loose peculiar interesting very interesting so that being the case means the exhaust valve was never opening so we were getting opening on the intake port or opening on the intake stroke to draw a charge in compression and likely ignition but no exhaust hmm and that puff we were hearing out the intake may be due to I don't know if this has a mechanical compression release on it so that the intake valve is held open a certain amount while the engines at cranking speed I do not know hmm I think the next step is to reference the service manual for this set and get some valve clearance specs and we'll reassemble see if it runs you're gonna have to a little a little silicone on that gasket temporarily until you can get a new gasket just to see if it runs you know what while we're here let's see if by chance the valve clearance specs are on the tag for the engine let me just there's a couple tags on this air cleaner body here let's see here's one hats let's see and I do not see anything that looks like a valve clearance specs of that on this tag over here is it's just the same tag same tag two different spots nope nothing like valve clearances nothing useful except that serial number let me go pull the service manual from Quick Serve and we'll get some information stay tuned okay well it's a couple days later and we're gonna get back on this little loan in here a little diesel first I guess let me explain why I'm working on the ground here for one thing Matt up on a table or a bench the shop the garage here are still not all fully unpacked not everything is put where it belongs I have my workbench back here pretty well done it's got some aahs ends on it now but I don't have any lighting up here yet in the ceiling so it's kind of dark and you know gloomy gloomy back here I do have this rolling bench that I use but that has this Onan on it right now the twin cylinder Onan so that's getting some work done to it I don't really want to take that off and disrupt that project so we're working out here where there's a little bit more light so what I've done since the last clip given all the components here a thorough inspection I don't see any issues this is a the exhaust side rocker arm the the one that had the issue and pulled the intake off as well I don't see any really any appreciable wear on anything nothing looks damaged bent cracked I did find some aluminum fragments in the valve cover here and in the the valve chest of a cylinder head there and I believe they are from the valve cover here you can see there's a little bit of damage right up here there's some scuffs and scrapes right there probably from the components jingling around in there as I was cranking the engine over you can see what it looks like on the undamaged side so I clean those out I don't think anything made it into the crankcase so that's a that's a plus so I also went and I got some information off the computer for this unit valve clearance is uh for thousands of an inch so we're going to set that does have an automatic compression release and some maintenance data first oil change after 20 hours change the oil every 250 hours which really surprised me that's quite a long interval for only the quart of oil this thing holds fuel and air filter at 500 hours and every thousand hours to adjust the valve clearance clean the oil filter and check the injector pressure so the cracking pressure pretty surprising this this thing actually had an issue you know valve related issue after only a quarter of the little over a quarter of the interval for valve clearances of being adjusted so don't know there may be a deeper issue with this engine we're gonna put it back together adjust the clearances I'm gonna reuse this gasket right now the valve cover gasket just gonna put a little bit of silicone around that just to get it running tested and see if this thing is worth actually putting any effort into as a usable generator so I'm gonna go ahead and reassemble those rocker arms and the get them adjusted I'm gonna save you having to watch me work in that little hole there and we'll come back when I got it put back together all right well valves are adjusted covers back on I loose ly assembled the exhaust and this baffle here so just for testing purposes for this initial test run we're going to leave the covers off so we can you know have good visual access to everything now just enough some of you are aware some of you are Dodd when you work on these little Barbie type generators the doors the baffles the covers they form up an integral part of the cooling system for the whole unit so anytime you're doing any any runs other than you know just a meander - you have to have the cooling door or that the doors the covers and etc in place but we just want to see if that runs and if it makes bolt egde so let's get the battery hooked up turn this little panel on so you wanna check the fuel pump fuel pump irani okay okay well it runs bronze mixed our how I didn't even get it warm and I can't really feel any eating the engine yet alright well at this point I'm gonna recheck the oil reassemble the covers and we'll start it up again and we'll let it run with no load will keep the oil up a little bit so we can drain it change the oil and we're kind of also going to pull out this little oil filter saying that's behind here and see what that looks like so just thought I'd show this before anybody gets up in arms about cooling I have this one panel and move down here is the hot air and exhaust it is chargeable so I haven't sit on this little dolly and it has plenty of air flow through there just for no load testing purposes the fresh air intake is over here so the fresh air comes in goes past the inverter through the engine cooling fan over the engines down and then back up again and then down past the muffler and out the bottom alright well we got some heat in the engine now and I've drained the oil well head it's just trickling out now whatever's left let's see what this oil screen filter looks like a little baby allen key here engine stopped levers in a bit of an awkward spot let me loosen that we'll come back okay I just loosen this allen screw a little bit maybe five turn six turns or so and that release the tension a little piece of spring steel here kind of release tension on that and grab that screw with a pair of needle nose pliers and pull out the screen and get all the way out so when it's it's definitely death it's not any kind of filter like pleated filter element or anything like that it's just a piece of coarse screen I'm not that course but I don't know how you would measure that screen okay there's a couple little little buggers in it I think I'll just rinse this out and re-install it and fill it back with oil okay well we've got a fresh quart of 15:40 in here clean that screen out reinstalled it and I've got my load bank hooked up so let's fire this thing up and see how it takes load well you know what I always forget this little breaker in here little circuit breaker thank you so [Music] I would expect nothing less than 60 Hertz bang on from an inverter generator so this this load bank has no real metering on it so that's why I've got the two flukes here voltage and current now in reading the manual for this little generator it is possible to scroll through the menus on the little controller to see the generators load in amps and in kilowatt that's about all you can see through there on that display but it's a little bit difficult to not navigate at least when I was reading it it seemed a bit difficult so we'll get back to that another day we'll just make sure that the thing can take some load here should be warm enough here I'll turn the master switch on fully fans going cooling fans alone [Music] yeah but this thing is rated at let me go look real quick main plates on the air filter cover 26.7 AMS raid same chick at least for 20 [Music] so we'll use the variable load up there at a three kilowatt 19.9 bowl I'm going to bring up a load here 5:18 volts smoker help you remember how stuff that muffler is or so I'm sure now that we're making speed we are burning off a lot of that and slick as what we in the industry call wet stacking right there it smell like anything but exhaust smoke did my elements of heating up and only time will tell if that is just burn off a problem with the engine anymore that and I think we got a problem the manual touches on wet stacking very briefly it states a minimum low that this unit should be operated on is 15% and even at that if it's operated at a low load like that for an extended period of time the load should be ramped up - almost full almost 100% for a few minutes before the unit is stuffed down get quite scoping out here Yeah right smoking 14 I'm gonna flush all the insects out of the garage all right well we'll come back in a little bit we'll see if this is cleared up at all okay well it's been 30 minutes smoke is beginning to clear clearly let's bring the load up but give it another 30 minutes Oh something's going wrong Oh for some reason the low just shot up dirty spawn these very act here so hold the study this thing should be my next press story at 75% yeah it's all Burbank here here a little bit more now well at this point we can handle a half an hour on it 20 amps I think it worth putting the next let's come back after another 30 minutes and see if that smoke clears off well after half an hour at 75% low that smoke is just about cleared up completely and I pretty much so I'm pretty happy with this saying it's worth so here all that is a foot the thing had a fairly easy life here but an easy life where a diesel means run at you know at least 40 50 60 % load wait loading is no good for diesel engine let it cool down and we put it aside for a for another day pretty happy with it I think after I change the oil again new air filter get a new gasket for the valve cover I think at that point they load banking again time and try to bring it up to 100 Oh see how it does thanks for watching thanks for sticking with the video if you did they tuned all right I just had to show you this put this pile up slip got blowing out of the East all [Music] yeah yes definitely needed a good run on the some load hmm I may even have a problem with that muffler being clogged up and too restrictive if I try to go to the running at a hundred percent replace that fuel filter - I forgot to mention that air filter fuel filter change the oil again put a new gasket on the valve cover and yeah another load bank and we'll try to bring it up to a hundred percent see if she'll do it thanks for watching

Channel: SmallEngineMechanic

Views: 556,163

Keywords: Onan, Cummins, Kohler, Katolight, Generac, Caterpillar, CAT, Detroit Diesel, GM Diesel, Hercules, Waukesha, Hatz, Deutz, Generator, Motor, Dynamo, Inverter, Repair, Restore, Rebuild, Load Bank, Test, Diesel, Gasoline, Gas, Fuel, Oil, Coolant, Kerosene, Soot, Wet Stacking, Diagnose, Maintain, RV, Recreational Vehicle

Id: HHqS6GWRtyU

Length: 45min 12sec (2712 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 03 2019