[Steve]

Not unusual Tim, mine smokes.

[Archived]

Ours smoked enough it was embarrassing. So I took it to marathon and they worked on it to get it to stop. Ours had a leaking turbo so they replaced that then hooked it up to a big load and ran it for hours. Then, they tapped the exhaust pipe with a hammer all the way to the back. It spit out a lot of black stuff and eventually pretty much stopped smoking.

It still smokes a little – but not anywhere near as much. Sometimes it runs nice with no visible smoke. It will leave a mark on the ground though. So will the

Webasto.

they said that generators that run too much with a small load tend to start smoking a lot.

[Archived]

Ours doesn’t smoke per ‘se. But, if I’m running the generator and I walk closely to the exhaust, I’ll see some soot on my leg (happens if I’m washing the coach and get close to the exhaust).

Currently, about 240 hours on the generator.

Mark

[Archived]

I hope this talk about smoke doesn’t encourage the EPA to require EGR and DEF generators.

Smoke????? I don’t see any.

[Bill]

Hey Jon,

I hate to tell you but they already have. Any diesel over over 25 hp (I think itis 25hp) and overmust meet emission standards. Farm tractors, pumps, generators, heavy equipment, etc, etc.

As far as a generator smoking, what seems to work a lot of the time is run it under a heavy load for several hours. Generatoirs are constant speed engines and under a light loadthey tend to glaze the rings. Try running it under a 75% load for several hours.

[Tim]

We’ve found out of our 5 different prevosts over the years, those equipped with Yanmar motors(aka Koehler) smoke more than Kubota( Powertech). Our 1992 Beaver Prevost with a naturally aspirated 15 KW Powertch smoked less than our current 2000 Marathon with 20KW Koehler

[Archived]

Smoking fenomena is called Wet Stacking…due to under run or run at small loads for extended period of time….see below…I also added couple docs into Articles section…hope this helps

[Dick]

What’s a heavy load? Here are some numbers to show it is not easy to load our generators.

20KW equals about 167 amps at 120V.

To put that in perspective my coach has 4 AC which draw a steady 13 amps each so if I were able to run all 4 continuously I would draw a total of 65 amps. Of course with all 4 running it will not take long for them to be cycling, significantly dropping the current draw.

If I have almost dead house batteries I can ramp up the current draw from the inverters but it would be extremely unusual for me to have a continuous draw of 20 amps. Those two are the steadiest loads I can think of and even then I can only draw 85 amps or 50% of the generator capacity. Everything else is very short duration and intermittent such as a water pump (10 amps) aux compressor (up to about 13 amps) refrigerator (about 6 amps), HW tank (about 10 amps) coffee maker (about 12 amps), and everything else including phantom loads, the TVs, table lamp, etc might add about 7 or 8 more amps.

We could turn on the stove, microwave, outdoor grille, and run the Webasto, the total of those would likely addmaybe 40 or so, maybe more, but as you can see running a loaded generator for several hours to clean it up sounds easy, but it actually will take a substantial effort to even hit and maintain a 75% load. which is going to be over 125 amps total.

Maybe the best that can be done is if two coaches are dry camping side by side, use one generator at a time and connect the coaches using the buddy plug and load them both up. After you have burned your neighbor’s fuel, switch over and run your generator.

[jack]

Jon,

You forgot the washer/dryer. Mine draw around 16 amps, split between my two inverters.

[Archived]

I didn’t forget it because its run time is so infrequent, and even when we run it to dry towels it isn’t on more than 15 or 20 minutes. My point was we have to take extraordinary measures to load our generators to the point where as hard as we try we will still have a hard time loading it because things like the HW tank, water pump, aux compressor, W&D, coffee maker, etc are short cycles unless we want to have a constant flow of hot water running, make coffee pot after pot, keep wetting towels, etc. and then running the ACs while we run our Webasto, and just run the stove, grille and microwave continuously.

That is one reason why I just don’t try, but when I do dry camp such as an overnight at a rest area I turn on every switch within reason, light a lot of lights, have at least 3 airs on, and so far so good with all three buses getting that treatment and no issues. I have had both Kubota and Yanmar and the only difference I have seen is the Yanmar seemed to start easier, but I also have Yanmar and Kubota engines in my equipment here at home and they all start well so I suspect the harder starting Kubota powered generator was likely just related to how that one was set up.

[Archived]

This is all anectdotal. That said…I have been using “Dr. Feelgood’s” (Rick May) “elixir” (RV-1) for over 2yrs and about 48k miles and have noticed the following: The genset and Aqua-hot no longer leave any residue from the exhaust even after 3-4 days. Does it help with fuel mileage? I have no idea and don’t really care. I do think that I will next try and see if I can replace Rogaine and Viagra with it. Geo.

[Corey]

Since one of its reported benefits is getting water out of your fuel, I suspect the desired results from the two previous medications might not be one of its benefits, but it should stop bloating due to water.

[Walter]

Hmm….Dewars and RV-1? Geo.

[Steve]

It’s important to put your genset under a load and get it up to temperature and clean the carbon out , but it’s also important to make sure the air-filter is clean and drawing air from a reasonably clean source in the bus.. Originally our genset had the air-filter mounted inside the generator box which was a hot and dusty source of air.

[Steve]

I did clean the air cleaner/filter. The manual said to Change out at 300 hours, but I just shook the dust out & it looks fairly clean. I’m at about 290 hrs on this air cleaner, don’t know if I really need a new air cleaner…