Onan 10KW. Rebuild it or buy a new one. 2800hrs

[USAF Retired]

I have an Onan 10Kw generator on my motorhome with 2800 hours on it. The repair facility says that the rotor, stator and control board are burnt. This repair will cost approximately $3000. A new generator will cost around $9000. My question is. What is the service life of this gen.. Is it cost effective to repair it or buy a new one?

 

[regularguy]

how much is just the generator section? Is the engine in good working order? 3k sounds a bit much. Is the 9k for a complete generator / engine or just the generator. Is the 3k for rebuilding the complete gen / eng?

 

[USAF Retired]

9K for complete new Ohan 10KW genset. 3K for new roto, stator and control board. I have looked for info online to just replace the generator part of the unit but I cant find any info.

 

[Howard R]

Obviously not on the same scale but ... our Onan 4KW with about 500 hours came up with a shorted stator.  Had Onan/Cummins in Denver pull and diagnose.  They quoted about $1300 to replace stator and reinstall over and above the $300 or so to pull and diagnose.

I got the stator from PPL in Houston for about $600 and put it back together and reinstalled.  Has been working fine since then. 

It was mostly labor I saved, think the stator price was close to Onan, but it's been a while so not sure.  I changed brushes, etc also.

Obviously you'd be working with a larger, heavier unit also.

Howard

 

[Ron from Big D]

Properly maintained, I would bet you could get 5000 to 6000 hours.

 

[porscheracer]

FWIW - the control board in our 8000W was quoted at $1500.  Luckily, it was still in warranty - barely!!

 

[SCVJeff]

That sure sounds like an awful lot of $$ for a simple rebuild (once out). Have you checked around on this? It's not a motorhome, but I just had Cummins West replace the timing belt on a 20k that involved taking the entire front of the genset cage and raidiator out just to get to the engine, then remove everything on the block. Change belt, reassemble, refill, time, AND RT from Bakersfield to an 8000' mtn. Bill: $1200.00!! Got quotes all the way up to needing to replace the engine.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Stators are expensive and if I was working for a living, I wouldn't do all that labor for nothing, so the $3000 figure doesn't surprise me at all.

Is this a Quiet Diesel model with the inverter or the older direct AC generator? If the older type, once you replace the rotor, stator and board, you pretty much have a new generator except for the diesel, which should have plenty of life left.  If the inverter type, you have the risk of an inverter failure.

I think I would opt for the rebuild.

 

[USAF Retired]

Thank you everyone. I opted for the rebuild. I'll let you know how it turns out

 

[TechDude]

I work on these for a living, and if the repair facility is Cummins associated, the repair will be backed by a good warranty.  This stuff is expensive to fix and if you don't get it right the first time , its a long way back in to fix it twice.