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Generator Oil Change
I know we have talked about this before…
I was reading my owner’s manual (OK, not a manly thing to do) and came across the section on generator maintenance.
It implies that I don’t do an oil and filter change every 100 hours but change the oil every 100 hours while changing the filter every 200 hours.
That seems to be reasonable. The oil filter is the full size NAPA Gold 1068, not the small filter size that was used on my previous Onan 1250. The Onan oil/filter change frequency was 250 hours.
I’m going out on a limb and follow the owner’s manual directions. The directions do say to clean the air filter and fuel filter at 100 hours, then change the fuel filter “cartridge” at 500 hours. The fuel filter is just a standard NAPA Gold 3390, not a cartridge. Strange.
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3 Replies
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Les,
For me and others that have or had that generation generator were on 150 hours oil and filter.
Save those Onan filters for your Liberty friends, that’s what Frank is putting in his new buses, a 1250 Onan.
Later
bv
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If you are changing oil, why would you not change the filter? $10?
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My equipment that has the same engine as my generator calls for 250 hour oil changes so I believe 100 hours may be conservative. Having said that I still try to stick closely to the generator manufacturer’s schedule.
I cannot always do that because we have had occasions when we were dry camping for an extended period and the generator ran for 150 or 170 hours. In those instances I try to precede the trip with an oil change and change it after the trip. I think all we can do is use our best judgment and try to stick with the recommendations.
The reason the generator gets so many hours of run time on some trips is because I prefer to not run my house devices from the inverters and use auto start for battery charging. So unless there is a compelling reason to run it 24 hours a day our practice is to start it in the morning and shut it down when we go to bed. When we are up and about with the generator running we can use any appliances or devices or A/Cs without thinking about if it is on an inverter circuit or how much current it will draw. In some respects running the generator is far better than having to manage power on 50 amp service.
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