Anyone want to swap their 8kW genny for my 15?

[Sean]

OK, I know this is short notice, but I thought I'd give it a shot.  (Moderators:  Apologies if this really belongs in Spare Tire and please move it; as a cashless swap it did not seem to meet the criteria there.)

I have about ten days to come up with a replacement generator somewhere in the Pacific northwest for the enormous 15kW continuous (17kW standby) diesel generator we've got in the bus.  Ideally, I would like to trade down to an 8kW model, but I would go as high as 10kW if that's the way it works out.

The history here is that my current generator came with the bus, and the way the original conversion was done (240-volt Gaggeneau cooktop, household fridge, not a single opening window and four massive basement airs, etc. etc.) this beast might actually have been necessary.  Since we already had it, we just kept it when we redid the coach, relocating it to a different compartment, remote-mounting the radiator, and putting it in a hush box.  I also completely rewired the start and shutdown systems to mimic Wrico's system.

We've lived with it this way for six years, but, frankly, we've never been able to fully load it, and I'm afraid it is wet stacking.  Moreover, we're burning way more fuel than we need to be for the loads we are running.  If I turn every darn thing in the bus on, and the battery charger is running full tilt, we're only using 12kW, and more often than not we're barely touching half that.  With the battery charger off, I can run everything on the bus with 8kW.

I'm looking for a good used 8kW unit that would fit easily into my existing enclosure.  That means a "naked" unit -- basically the engine coupled to the generator head, without any external enclosures or accessories.  Preferably it would be a Kubota prime mover, which would even make at least half of my mount points reusable.  And in a perfect world I prefer brushless, transformer-regulated units with no electronics at all.  But I'm not going to be too picky for this project.

I'm willing to trade my existing unit straight across.  I don't know how many hours it has; we've put 1,200 or so on it, and I am guessing it had perhaps 600 when we got it (hour meter was broken, since replaced).  It probably needs a valve adjustment but not much else.  It is reliable and bullet-proof and would  be one of the few things to survive Armageddon.  It has a brushless transformer-regulated Fidelity head coupled to a Kubota V1902 engine.

I'm just north of Redmond, Oregon at the moment, heading to Sumner, Washington, where the resources exist to make the swap.  For the right unit I would be willing to travel anywhere in Washington or Oregon, and probably most of Idaho and northern California.

I'm also willing to buy a used 8kW unit outright if someone has one they want to part with, but doesn't need a bigger one in trade.  But I am definitely not looking to spring the big bucks for a new one.

Drop me an email off-board, or post a reply here if you have good news for me.

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

[rv_safetyman]

Sean, I suspect you have already contacted Dick Wright.  I have heard that he often has some used units.  Also, he does some work on Prevost conversions in order to resell them (at least he did a while back).  Perhaps he has one with a smaller generator that he wants to upgrade.

Jim

[Ed Hackenbruch]

I thought of Dick right off the bat too, especially since you aren't that far away from him.

[Sean]

Actually, I spoke with Justin at Wrico before I posted here.  They do not have a suitable take-out in stock and all he could do was quote me on a new unit.

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com

[BG6]

If you yank out the 15KW and cooling, do you have room for TWO smaller gensets?  I'd be willing to bet that you have a good logical load break at, say, 5KW and 3 - 4KW.  That is, a couple of groups of things, one that you need to run a lot and the other stuff that you run less often.

You can probably sell the 15KW then find a couple of smaller gensets cheaper than an 8KW unit, then you only run the power that you need at any given moment.  You will also add redundancy.

[Sean]

If you yank out the 15KW and cooling, do you have room for TWO smaller gensets?

Not really...

I'd be willing to bet that you have a good logical load break at, say, 5KW and 3 - 4KW. 

Actually, 90% of the time we run the genny, it is to charge batteries, which is around 4kW.  However, we always also then make hot water, another 1,500 watts, and most of the time we'll also run either the heaters or one A/C, another 1,500 watts.  So we can usually come up with 7kW of load every time we run the unit.

...  You will also add redundancy.

That, we already have.  In addition to the generator, we have a 6.5kW alternator and an inverter.  So if the genny ever craps out, we can run ~6kW of loads just by running the main engine, at about a .5-.7 gph penalty.  In fact we have had to do this a couple of times, because the genny dip tube stops at about the quarter tank level, and there have been occasions when we have needed the power but had less than 75 gallons left in the tank.  The good news there is that the alternator will charge the batteries at better than 200 amps, whereas the genny/charger combination tops out around 125 or so.

-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com