uh oh! Might have a generator problem

[Stan Simpson]

Last Saturday, I changed the oil, oil filter and air cleaner on the Onan 8000 kw generator. Today, doing some work on the coach where its stored, I decided to run the generator and put a load on it. It really hasn't been used since December of last year.

Fired it up and it ran fine. When I put the bedroom a/c on, and the load kicked in, the generator coughed and spewed a steady stream of white exhaust for a few minutes and then returned to normal. I turned on the living room a/c and when it kicked in, the exhaust turned all white and very thick. I let it run like that for a good 10 minutes and it never changed.

Prior to the service last Saturday, the generator has never had these symptoms. Is this a serious problem? Any thoughts on a diagnosis?

TIA, as always,

Stan

I did some research and the consensus was it depends on the smell. Definitely smelled like diesel, not coolant.

[Robert Mathis]

Sounds like an injector problem to me. I had the same thing happen to the genset in my boat one night, it started running rough, white smoke, etc. I turned it off, let it sit a minute and when it restarted, whatever was clogging an injector cleared itself and it ran fine. Note that we always ran the genset from the time we left the dock until we returned and plugged back in to power the fridge, freezer, icemaker and a/c's.

[Stan Simpson]

Today I worked on a different problem with the coach; the Aladdin tank settings are all screwed up and Bill Sprague is helping me re-calibrate. Since I can no longer keep the coach on my own property, I have it in storage about 2 miles from home. I had to drive 30 miles to a Petro today so I could fill the fresh water tank, after I had driven 15 miles the other way to dump at a Flying J. Turned out the Flying J has capped their potable water pump. I went down the road to Love's, and they have done the same. Thank you Petro.

Anyway, since it was 86 here today, I had the gen-set running while I drove with the a/c on. I didn't see any evidence of the thick white smoke that I saw yesterday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it was an injector that is now unclogged. I'm going to keep an eye on it though. Thanks for the reply, Robert.

Stan