Onan Hybred power system

[werearethere]

I have a 2008 Monaco Dynasty equipped with the 8/10 Onan Hybred power system.
Is there anyone on this forum with the same system or know of anyone with it?
I am having issues with the inverter and am hoping someone can help me solve these issues.

Thanks, Bob

[Old Navy]

You should have received a pretty complete instruction book with the Onan. My '05 coach has a book from Onan that explains operation, maint and some troubleshooting. It was not clear about recharging the chassis batteries (it doesn't, but mine is an older model than yours).
If you have a specific question, tell us what it is. Somebody may have had a similar issue.
Art

[moonridge]

I have 2008 Monaco Dynasty Nottingham with the same 8/10 Onan Hybrid Power System. I've had it sice 2007 when I bought it new. I might be able to help as long as it's not to technical.

Jerry

[werearethere]

Thanks for the response. I have been getting a fault #163 "high inverter temperature" lately. It seems to occur whenever the inverter is sending 125+ amps to recharge the house batteries. As I nurse the batteries up and the amp output decreases the faults stop.
I have had the batteries load tested and checked the specific gravity, they are good.
I have checked the cooling lines and they appear to be unobstructed and liquid flowing properly.
There is a cooling fan in the inverter and it seems to be turning on and off.
I am afraid I might have a bad inverter and don't really look forward to $6000.00+ plus labor for the repair. I am hoping someone else has experienced this and found an easy and inexpensive solution.
If anyone else has heard of this problem I would sure appreciate help.

Thanks,
Bob

[Dave78Chief]

Per the operators (http://www.cumminsonan.com/www/html/...s/981-0178.pdf) and service (http://www.cumminsonan.com/www/html/...s/981-0546.pdf) manuals, error 163 is BOOST OVER TEMPERATURE. Error 156 is Inverter temp fault. While I am not familure with your rigs setup the onan manual indicates there is typically a Main Service panel and a Sub-Panel. Given that Boost mode is entered under high load situations (> 7500 Watts for the 810 model), do you by chance have several additional loads (heaters, TV, etc.) powered ON while charging the battery bank? Just wondering if the total system load (i.e excessive) is resulting in your high temperature warning.

When demands on the generator alternator are greater than 7500 watts, the unit goes into Boost mode. This means that the inverter section can draw up to 2500 watts of power FROM the battery to ADD to the alternators 7500 wats for a max value of 10000 watts. Therefore, I am not sure the idea that error 163 (Boost Mode overtemp) is related to battery charge is correct in that you cannot be charging and discharging the battery at the same time. Given the large number of AC & DC high current cable connections used with this system, I would check as many of them as possible to ensure you do not have a corroded or loose connection resulting in a high heat sensor problem. Especially in the inverter box which is where the suspect sensor would be located.

Unfortunantly, the Hybrid system is sort of like todays OBD II cars in that you really need the Onan InPower software to troubleshoot them. You might want to consider having the system analyzied by technician. The service manual is not real informative about things like this with these systems.

General rule of thumb is that you should only charge a battery at 25% of it's maximum AH rate. At a 125 amp rate, that would mean you have at lease 500AH of battery capacity. That would require at say 3 sets of Trojan T105 batteries which would provide 675AH capacity. 2 sets would only provide 450AH. I only bring this up because a 125 amp charging rate is very very high. If you only have 2 sets of 6 volt batteries, then you may need to check the Battery capacity setting in your Onan Hybrid system.

Hopefully some of this helps but it is mostly common sense guessing based on the documentation.

Good luck,
Dave

[werearethere]

Dave, thanks for the reply.
The manuals do indicate fault 163 is Boost over temperature, however the actual readout on the control panel states "high inverter temperature. That being said, I was not using the manual boost mode and made sure that everything in the coach is off. When this is occurring my monitor indicates approximately 22 amps being drawn on line 2 (where inverter charger is connected) while the Battery readout shows up to 140 amps going to the batteries for charging in bulk charge mode, when I finally nurse the batteries to absorb charge the amps going to the batteries drops and no longer throws a fault.

I have 4 L16 Interstate 6 volt batteries in series and parallel, each 12 volt combination has 420 ah giving me a total of 840 ah in my house battery bank so the amps shown going to the batteries in bulk charge fit within the general rule for charging amps.

I have already taken it to Cummins Southwest here in Phoenix and of course it didn't throw a fault while they had it.

I have removed and cleaned all the cables in the battery compartment and it has not stopped the faults, however thanks to your recommendation I will try to follow all lines to their termination and verify that they all have good solid connections.

Thanks again for your info and suggestions, if you think of anything else please let me know.

Bob

[Dave78Chief]

Those are some big batteries! Anyway, given many users have problems with ATS leads coming loose from vibration (especially the nuetral lead), I made that suggestion.

Given that this system works on a CAN communication buss (data from brains and sensors sent back and forth to remote panel), there could be connection problems with those to. Simple matter of disconnecting reconnecting cables to "clean" the pins. One of those general RV type issues.

Good Luck,
Dave

[cb5300]

Originally Posted by moonridge

I have 2008 Monaco Dynasty Nottingham with the same 8/10 Onan Hybrid Power System. I've had it sice 2007 when I bought it new. I might be able to help as long as it's not to technical.

Jerry

Originally Posted by werearethere

I have a 2008 Monaco Dynasty equipped with the 8/10 Onan Hybred power system.
Is there anyone on this forum with the same system or know of anyone with it?
I am having issues with the inverter and am hoping someone can help me solve these issues.

Thanks, Bob

This is interesting...When I had my 2008 Signature built I had asked about the Onan Hybred Generator and was told by Monaco that they were having problems with them for some reason and refused to put one in my Sig. They told me that they had tryed the hybred in something like 5 or 6 coaches and had pulled them from their production line and had gone back to the older gensets. My coach was started in the first week of Dec 2007 and finished it the last week of Jan 2008 and came with a 12,500KW Onan generator.

[moonridge]

Bob,

I’m happy you were able to get these replays from "Dave78Chief" and "cb5300". Because I would have never been able to come up with that kind of information. Also, I have never experienced what you explained. My problem was more serious because in July of 2010 the Inverter completely crashed, no AC or DC power and Oman replaced it because it was still under warranty. I was very fortunate because they said the Inverter cost about $20,000. I don’t know if that was true or not but I had no way of verifying so I took their word for it. It was replaced by Onan in Irvine, Ca. The next month I was having problems with the control panel and ended up taking it to Onan in Coburg, Oregon. I always take a trip up there for the summer. They checked it over and informed me that one of the batteries was bad and all 4 had to be replaced which were also L16 Interstate like yours. I replaced them with the same L16 Interstate. That cost me a total of $1500. Since then I have had no problems. Almost 2 years. This is a pretty good system because I use it a lot dry camping.
I have to mention though that when the Generator is has charged the batteries and the Generator if shut off, I slid I slide it out to check the oil and coolant level I notice that the coolant is percolating, not violently. It quits after a few minutes. I don’t know if this is related to your problem, but sure is suspicious.
You know if you want to share information any time my email address is res1mfog@yahoo.com. We have something in common.

Jerry