Brand new Onan GenSet with major malfunction and no part available ...

[AC Orange]

.
Brand new Onan gen-set in my new Class "B" Winnebago Paseo. It is a 2.8HGJB-1125 gasoline unit typical of what is being placed in many class B's. It had 10 hours on it and refused to start. The second week of August 2017 I took it to an Onan/Cummins dealer service shop (as it is under warranty) where they had to remove it from the RV for repair. Turns out it is a bad coil. Hmmm, seems like a relatively minor problem. Well now it's Nov 6th and still no gen-set and I'm being told probably December. Turns out that there is a boatload of bad coils in these things and Onan has had them on back order for a while. The dealer checked the entire region and all the Onan shops have coils on back order (probably 3 dozen or more). Googling this I find it is a common problem right now. I called the Cummins head office to try and get more info on this hard to believe story. Talked to a "second tier" guy and it's true ... no coils until at least the end of November. I am stunned that Cummins has no second source supplier for stuff like this. My gosh, it's a small engine coil we are talking about ! So I'm stuck waiting on this. Has anybody else had a similar experience ?

[BirchyBoy]

I wonder if it was a faulty design or manufacturing? The first would be hard to resolve but the second should be easier.

[CJBROWN]

Sure. Sis and BIL's diesel one in their big fancy coach never would run right - cummins took it out and they left it with them for a month before it was reinstalled into the unit. Still never did run right - smoked and belched and jerked and sometimes wouldn't run at all. They gave up and sold the whole rig - was a lemon, just one of many, many things wrong. Heartbreaking. Yup, a winnebago. [shrug]

They said they would replace it worst case but never did - just dinked around with it for months.

Patience grasshopper... mother-ship onan will come through.

[NeilV]

Its a air gap magneto like on a lawn mower and not an external coil on the HGJB so they are custom to the engine and not universal. I just had the first one go bad after 17 years and almost 1,500 hours (consider that around 75,000 miles on an air cooled motorcycle) so one would not expect a lot of spares to be stocked so if they had a bad batch get into the supply chain then all the existing ones from known good stock would get used up pretty quickly with all the new suspect ones getting pulled leaving none available. Then you would have to wait for the issue at the manufacturers be resolved before they could restock known good replacements and get them into the supply chain. It could be a simple problem like a bad batch of lacquer or something worse like the winding or laminated core machine requiring service/replacement or worse yet an updated design that has proven to be a dud. If its a bad design of the coil itself then they would have to re-design it and re-tool in order to start making the replacements.

Hopefully its not more than the coil and not related to insufficient air flow in the belly pan of the generator causing heat buildup requiring an update of that also. Designing and testing out a fix for that could take some time causing further delays.

[AC Orange]

Originally Posted by NeilV

Its a air gap magneto like on a lawn mower and not an external coil on the HGJB so they are custom to the engine and not universal. I just had the first one go bad after 17 years and almost 1,500 hours (consider that around 75,000 miles on an air cooled motorcycle) so one would not expect a lot of spares to be stocked so if they had a bad batch get into the supply chain then all the existing ones from known good stock would get used up pretty quickly with all the new suspect ones getting pulled leaving none available. Then you would have to wait for the issue at the manufacturers be resolved before they could restock known good replacements and get them into the supply chain. It could be a simple problem like a bad batch of lacquer or something worse like the winding or laminated core machine requiring service/replacement or worse yet an updated design that has proven to be a dud. If its a bad design of the coil itself then they would have to re-design it and re-tool in order to start making the replacements.

Hopefully its not more than the coil and not related to insufficient air flow in the belly pan of the generator causing heat buildup requiring an update of that also. Designing and testing out a fix for that could take some time causing further delays.

.
The Cummins repair shop as well as the Cummins head office gave me p/n 0166-0772 (and sent me a pic) which is the coil in the pic (p/n on box). Could these newest gen-sets be using a different sort of coil ?

[NeilV]

That could be a new design with a CDI unit. What I am used to on the two cylinder HGJ models are two magneto coils like this with one coil for each spark plug:



The one you listed though is for CCK models Beginning Spec J. Also B & N Series. BF, BFA, BG, BGA, BGE Spec A-F, B43E, B43G, B43M, B48G, B48M, NH, NHA, NHB, NHC, NHE, NHP, N52M which may have breaker points.

It is also used in Miller Welders and some John Deer equipment.

Amazon has a few at $123 each so they are quite expensive:
https://www.amazon.com/Cummins-16607...70_&dpSrc=srch

Ebay has them for as low as $62 new:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...-0772&_sacat=0

[lotsoftoys]

The correct Cummins Onan part number is A043K694.

[AC Orange]

.
Oh great ! So it looks like both places are giving me the wrong part number ? This is not giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

[NeilV]

What does the Onan manual that came in the Winnebago Black Bag indicate? A call to a Winnebago Service Advisor at their toll free number may be advisable to have them pull the build sheet and tell you exactly what generator was installed and which coil it uses. Have the VIN and Serial Numbers, etc available for them when you make the call.

[AC Orange]

Originally Posted by NeilV

What does the Onan manual that came in the Winnebago Black Bag indicate? A call to a Winnebago Service Advisor at their toll free number may be advisable to have them pull the build sheet and tell you exactly what generator was installed and which coil it uses. Have the VIN and Serial Numbers, etc available for them when you make the call.

.
I already did all that. Talked to 4 different sources multiple times. First call was Winnebago, who referred me to Cummins (they said it's a Cummins issue, talk to them). Next was my RV dealer who referred me to the local Cummins repair shop. After the repair shop pulled the gen-set out and gave me the bad news about delivery time on coils I made another call to a second tier service rep at the Cummins main office. I didn't have to say much to the Cummins 2nd tier guy. All of my pertinent info was already in the Cummins data base (including the correct s/n of my gen-set). Every source gave me the same info on this issue, including the p/n I've cited. So you can see my reason for being confused with regard to the p/n.

[NeilV]

Time to visually confirm what's already in there whether its Magneto's or Trigger Pickups with CDI and Coil or Points, Condenser and Coil.