B190 Enthusiasts

Seems I don't get on here much until I have problems!!

Anyway I bought a brand new onan 2012 model. I learned a lot of things about our b190s and the onan 2800.

I will say it is on the egde of it's abilities with at least my air cond which is a dometic 11k btu.

If you read all the gen specs and the air cond specs plus add in the DC converter and 12v charger it is real close to not enough amperage to run it. equalization of Freon is critical when firing up the AC. Specs show at times one could see as much as 50 amps required to start an AC unit under certain conditions. The Onan is 23 and change amps max.

Some care needs to be exercised when starting your AC of any kind and everything I have seen including brand new 9200k btu units can still see 45 amps at times of start up. All this means is one may see anything in between 10 and 50 amps at any given time. rotor or fan lock up being the highest, add an older unit to the mix and it could be higher.

This will not only cause potential damage to your gen set but also put some heavy wear and tear on it's life expectancy.

Some solutions for gen set life is a high load or easy start cap, this helps give more power to the compressor for starting under certain conditions.

Anyway I learned lots more and if anyone wants more info I can share, otherwise I may be typing all night!!

All in all we don't use our gen for air cond use as the norm. Typically we camp with shore power, although we like the gen for many uses while traveling. I may be saying stuff everyone already knows, I did not and thought I would share this.. If you buy a new gen or have an old one, don't expect too much from them. Take it easy on them, do the onan suggested maintenance and enjoy a long relationship with the little guy!!

Everything I read from Onan is that the 2.8 is plenty to start and run a 13K BTU A/C...and as you noted ours are 11K. Both of those included a base load of another so many watts; I think it was 1000 when using the 11K A/C. I never worried about it, and I would run the fridge on A/C while on the road without a problem.

Sometimes the generator would stall when I was first applying a load to it, but I think that was my generator being annoying, rather than too much load for it.

Mine does not like to go from OFF to High in one click without killing the gen. althought if you go from off to fan to lo to med to high all is well. but my gen is not broken in and could be an issue...that and a 1994 a/c unit..


i do wounder until i put an AMP Clamp on the DC chargerand DC inverter- what it uses or what the gen see's on start up in regards to amp draw... i wrote that weird but you get the point..

I bought my rig without a gen or A/C. But last summer I toured the South in July/August.

I broke down and had an 11k A/C and Onan genset installed.

Since I spent about 1/2 my nights boondocking I kept both running quite a bit. In fact, I put about 220 hrs on the genset during that trip alone. It kept it about 15-30 F cooler than outside...it was tough some days (Little Rock 114F - Coach was struggling to stay under 100F). but all in all it was a great setup and I'm glad I had it.

I had some troubles with the generator early on (no A/C from Phoenix to El Paso) but that was mostly attributable to faulty installation by Cummins and a bad fuel pump ( a whole other story).

I did have to make sure the genset was running for a good 3-5 mins before turning on A/C and graduating from low to med to high did seem to make things run smoother.

Thanks for the confirmation. Thats good info seeing you even replaced the AC and its still a bit on the edge. But hey it works ya just have to sneak up on it a bit as you say.