Bear with me I’ll make this as short as possible, but I want to give you as much information as well to help me with this diagnosis, to avoid extraneous rabbit hole options…
THE BACKSTORY:
We were away off grid, and running the generator which is a 2018 Onan 4000.
It has been meticulously exercised two hours a month since I bought it new, and I do the proper oil changes ahead of schedule.
I’ve had no issues with the generator whatsoever, to date.
That said, on this trip, we were not plugged in for eight hours, and at 76% battery capacity (4x 100 amp Battleborn’s), when I fired up the generator.
It ran fine, started up fine, and continue to run, and powered all 120v outlets.
The microwave lit up indicating that I had 120v power. But after I started USING the microwave— 10 minutes into the generator start up, the generator no longer provided power. IT WAS STILL RUNNING JUST FINE! Just no longer providing power to the RV.
Then, minutes later, the power from the generator would return, without me doing anything.
Now, at least to me, what was interesting was that while no power was being provided by the generator to the coach outlets, the generator continued to run just fine-no surging—steady run.
The temperature outside was 49°.
The gas tank for the RV was full.
The coach batteries are 4 x 100 battle born lithium batteries and they were at 76% capacity.
Only thing on in the RV was the residential refrigerator and the microwave.
We were parked on the street with a slight slope to the starboard.
Now you may be about to ask, if you’ve been playing along to this point, what were the error codes on the generator?
Here’s another problem…we were parked on Petaluma Boulevard (a main thoroughfare—old highway 101), and I couldn’t go out in the pouring rain with the traffic and open the door without being killed to read any error codes.
I’m guessing either the generator quit delivering power due to a high or low voltage condition, but without the error codes, I’m in the dark, (no pun intended).
The worst part, or perhaps the best part, is that this condition remedied itself the next day (with and without the microwave on), and the generator ran fine and brought all the batteries up to 100% SOC.
Thoughts? Thanks!