Mods/Upgrades to our 2003 Dynasty

[JFNM]

GREAT WORK!!

[zmotorsports]

Originally Posted by JFNM

GREAT WORK!!

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Mike.

[MrMudstud]

Great job Mike! Everything you do is 1st class, just outstanding.

Word of Caution........if this continues, you will wake up and have RV's in your drive way, expecting some of your expertise work on our units.......

[zmotorsports]

Originally Posted by MrMudstud

Great job Mike! Everything you do is 1st class, just outstanding.

Word of Caution........if this continues, you will wake up and have RV's in your drive way, expecting some of your expertise work on our units.......

Thanks. I appreciate that.

Mike.

[Captjake1]

Originally Posted by MrMudstud

Great job Mike! Everything you do is 1st class, just outstanding.

Word of Caution........if this continues, you will wake up and have RV's in your drive way, expecting some of your expertise work on our units.......

So very true! He does outstanding work. Love following this thread.

[zmotorsports]

Originally Posted by MrMudstud

Great job Mike! Everything you do is 1st class, just outstanding.

Word of Caution........if this continues, you will wake up and have RV's in your drive way, expecting some of your expertise work on our units.......

Originally Posted by Captjake1

So very true! He does outstanding work. Love following this thread.

Thanks guys. Your flattery is overwhelming.

I know there are people on this forum that do as nice if not nicer work. I don't think my skills/abilities are anything out of the norm but my wife sometimes thinks I take them for granted.

Thanks again guys.

Mike.

[Prometheus]

Actually, Mike, you would be a great candidate for fitting together step by step tutorials, and a training series that RVIA might make the SOP. And pay dearly for.

[zmotorsports]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Actually, Mike, you would be a great candidate for fitting together step by step tutorials, and a training series that RVIA might make the SOP. And pay dearly for.

Thank you very much. I am flatered.

Mike.

[zmotorsports]

Well heck, good news and bad news.

Good news is the first trip with the new refrigerator was awesome!!! The wife loves her new residential refrigerator. It sure offers much more room than the Norcold, and I didn't think it was tight at all. My wife will love the extra room available. Also, the refrigerator content restraints worked perfectly and held everything in place. Big thanks for Van again for the idea. I also got some compliments on them from some friends we met in West Yellowstone while we were there. They liked the idea as well.

Bad news is my generator issue is not fixed. I found out I have an intermittent issue and it was just a coincedence that after I replaced the brushes the week before we left for vacation that the generator worked perfectly for the 10-minutes or so in the driveway.

We no sooner hit the road last week and about halfway to West Yellowstone I decided to fire up the genset and kick the roof airs on to travel in cool comfort. I was 100% confident that the generator was repaired, due to the worn brushes, and it working perfectly in the driveway after replacing the brushes and stoning the slip rings.

To say I was somewhat PISSED when the generator shut-down about 10-seconds after firing it and flashing the same code is a major understatement. If it would have been up to me I would have turned around and headed back home but the wife wanted to make the best of it and just continue on. She definitely trys to bring out the "better" me.

After I calmed down I realized that it was not too awfully warm and we were better than half way to our destination so we should just make the best of it. I am trying to work on this as a "personal improvment" as I cannot seem to relax when things aren't just right. Besides, once we arrived at Grizzly RV in West Yellowstone we would have hookups anyways. Funny thing is we ended up running the furnace more in West Yellowstone than the A/C due to the sudden drop in temps on Tuesday.

I dug into the generator Saturday after returning home and checked the rotor resistance through the brush leads and also completely separated all of the stator windings to check for shorts or opens in them as well as the quadrature windings. Everything checked out. I then hooked up my DSO (oscilloscope) to the brush leads and fired it up momentarily to check for a flying open in the rotor, which is rare but I wanted to be as thorough as possible. I have heard of flying opens and flying shorts in rotors but I have not personally ever seen one first hand. Again, everything was checking out. On a last ditch effort to confirm the rotor and stator were intact I force fed the brushes 12 VDC through a 5-amp fuse to see if it would put out a constant voltage at the AC output. It did, it was putting out slightly less than half of the rated output but it was constant and not wavering so I feel very confident that my rotor and stator are in good condition. Only other thing I could think it could possibly be was the control board.

Yesterday morning I wanted to go do one more thorough check. I decided to hook up two VOM's, one on DCVolts attached across the brush leads, the other meter on ACVolts reading the output at the customer connection point. Wouldn't you know it, I fired the genset up and it immediately started putting out AC voltage. My exciter voltage was varying slighly around the 28-29 VDC range and the output was sitting between 118-120VAC. This had me scratching my head because everything was working as it should. I decided to let it run for a few minutes and see if it would start acting up and sure enough it did. I lost the exciter voltage from the control board and also simultaneously lost my AC output. BINGO!!! At least I could see where my problem was.

I was losing the exciter voltage from my control board intermittently. Again, not something I have seen in the past. From my past experience when a control board has failed it fails permanently. I called Flight Systems and spoke to Tom, their resident expert to see if they had a remanned control board for my Onan 10kW genset. I also reviewed my findings with him and he agreed that it was a control board issue. He also confirmed that they have seen quite a few control boards throw intermittent issues like this. Obviously they have a LOT more experience and exposure than I do so I wasn't going to question him. I was just thankful it failed at the time I had meters hooked up so I could witness it. More bad news is that Flight Systems does not offer the control board that I need for my 10kW Onan so a call to my local dealer to order one was necessary. The parts guy also informed me that he has sold quite a few of the same part # over the past several years.

Oh well, long story short, it should be here by Wednesday or Thursday so I can replace it and put the genset back together and get the coach ready for the next trip.

I will snap some pictures as I am replacing it as the front of the coach needs to come off and the end of the enclosure to get to the control board.

Mike.

[rmcb]

Mike,
Have you thought of the possibility of a cold solder joint or intermittent open on one of the solder connections on the board? I have repaired a few circuit boards with this problem (not Onan). It takes a bit of searching with a magnifying glass and wiggling components to find a problem like this. I have also just re-soldered a bunch of connections that looked like cold joints and a couple times it worked. I have also sometimes found that connectors can become intermittent. These can be really frustrating to chase down unless the board us under power at the time...and even then!

But, you sound like a pretty accomplished mechanic and I may not be telling you anything you don't already know.

Looking forward to your pictures.

All the best,

Roy

[zmotorsports]

Originally Posted by rmcb

Mike,
Have you thought of the possibility of a cold solder joint or intermittent open on one of the solder connections on the board? I have repaired a few circuit boards with this problem (not Onan). It takes a bit of searching with a magnifying glass and wiggling components to find a problem like this. I have also just re-soldered a bunch of connections that looked like cold joints and a couple times it worked. I have also sometimes found that connectors can become intermittent. These can be really frustrating to chase down unless the board us under power at the time...and even then!

But, you sound like a pretty accomplished mechanic and I may not be telling you anything you don't already know.

Looking forward to your pictures.

All the best,

Roy

Thanks Roy. I too have seen many solder joint issues over the years. Mostly on many of the electric forklifts that I have worked on over the past 27+ years of my career but some on automotive applications. I know the 1993-1998 Jeep ZJ's had an issue with a coolant level indicator that was a solder joint on the driver information center circuit board, which I had repaired about a dozen of over the years. Unfortunately I did not see anything that jumped out at me on this particular control/circuit board. I was originally thinking there was some kind of step-up transformer to bump the exciter voltage up from 12 VDC to the neighborhood of 28-32 VDC but upon talking with Tom @ Flight Systems, he informed me that the control board takes the AC voltage generated from the quadrature windings and rectifies it for excitation. Then the board uses PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to control excitation voltage. Tom said that this is the way all of the QD control boards function IF they have the error code function, which from my experience is most of the modern Onan Quiet Diesel's found in diesel RV's these days.

I have a friend that owns an electronic repair company so I am going to have him compare the new circuit board when I receive it with the old to try and locate the faulty component and if he is able to repair the old I will hold onto it as a backup. You know the old saying, if you have a spare part you will never need it, right?

Mike.

[rmcb]

I know what you mean. I have a shop full of "spares" hoping I'll never need them.

[Vanwill]

Mike, your Onan is the 10K, non-inverter type, right?

[zmotorsports]

Originally Posted by Vanwill

Mike, your Onan is the 10K, non-inverter type, right?

That is correct Van. Old technology.

Mike.