My Onan generator appears to be listing to the front (left). I can see two rubber mounts at the back (right) under the motor section but can not see under the generator on the other end to see any mounts. Should the generator sit level in the compartment? How many mounts should there be?

The front two mounts will be inside your fan shroud. From the pic it appears you have a rusted through cross beam under the floor. Crawling under the comaprtment should reveal the weak area. The genrator should be level.

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Originally posted by TJ:
. My Onan generator appears to be listing to the front (left)

Glad you posted that picture of your generator because I am wondering the same. My generator leans the same way in fact that picture looks exactly like mine. I'm thinking that can't be right for the generator to lean like that, I'm thinking it needs to be level. So I'm curious to see what feedback you get.

Tom

Whoa matey, she's listing to port! There should be 4 rubber mounts and sitting level. It will be difficult to check oil level correctly and your oil consumption may be higher when tilted. My rig has a Kohler genset so it isn't identical but I would agree with Tom K that something has damaged the support below, ie corrosion or vibration. Interesting to note that T&L's is similar...

You will probably have to repair the gen base. A base plate patch and a new mounting rail will likely be needed. Not sure if you can just tip it back up and repair. You may have to remove the genset to get to it. Since we have 2 current examples I'll bet this isn't the first time. Maybe someone has pics of a previous encounter. Good luck!

Nothing appears to be rusted away. There is a mounting plate between the drawer and the generator. The plate has a hump under the right side where the rubber mounts are. There is no hump on the left where the generator is listing. When I tried jacking the left side up it raised the mounting plate so something is still attaching the generator to the plate.

Tom, in my parts manual it shows isolator mounts between the drip pan and the cast oil pan. The drip pan is bolted stait to the sliding base. The generator angles down towards the front
but the fan housing looks almost 90 deg. from the base. Try prying up between oil pan and drip pan.

Doorman.

If you look at where the specs are on the side, they look almost parallel with the base. I'm not sure yours is tilted that bad.

Doorman

I can't keep my two cents out of this but, looking at the picture the left edge of the base apprears to be at least 1 inch lower that the right which could be about the size of a vibration da mpening bushing. I would venture that if you look closely at the top of those bolts on the left that you will see about 1 inch slack. Enough for the missing bushings.

Thought I would post a picture of my leaning generator. The base plate on mine has a sage in the middle plus someone added a piece of angle iron to the front support. My winter project will be to remove the generator and rebuild the base plate and slides. I think for now I'm going to add two vibration pads between the generator and base plate, see if that will level if off some and damped the vibration. The left side does not currently have any vibration mounts while the right side has two that are in good shape.

Oops I posted the link instead of the picture!

Tom

You cannot see the left side isolators. they sit at an angle between the base drippan and the cast oil pan. The mounting bolts into the oil pan come thru the base drip pan. the genny has to be removed from the sliding tray to get to them.

Doorman

Well, I'm still learning. One photo wasn't enough for me -- had to download the WHOLE thing. But if you open the site, you will see the Onan Emerald I 4.5 Kw in our 1989 Regal 25. The photo's not from a good angle, but you can still see that the genset slopes down to the left. For some reason it was designed that way. Looking closely at TJ's and Tom's photos, it looks like they're pretty much the same slope, and TJ's is probably okay.

Why the hair dryer? That 20 year old genset saved our butts twice, once for a 2 day power outage after the backlash of hurricane Ike hit us in 2008, and again for a 3 day outage after the ice storm of 2009. A horde of extension cords kept our refrigerator and freezer going, and we eventually added lights, TV's and computer gear, as well as the furnace after the ice storm. It was cold. How cold was it? The genset engine couldn't generate enough heat to keep the carb from icing, hence the hair dryer. It was getting down close to 10 degrees at night and warming up to the 20's by day. We loved our Barth!

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and freezer

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kept our refrigerator and freezer

with 10 deg. at night and 20 deg in day ...why? computer and furnace essential.

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Originally posted by Dick Dubbs:

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and freezer

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kept our refrigerator and freezer

with 10 deg. at night and 20 deg in day ...why? computer and furnace essential.

My wife likes it comfortable. With furnace running, house (including R & F) was at about 72 deg. Freezer was not so critical if we kept the door shut. I tried it and it worked okay; only problem would be the unlikely possibility of both the R & F compressors starting at the same time. I was amazed at how much stuff we had running on a 15 amp circuit. And, yes, it has reached the point where the computer is almost as critical as the furnace.

From what I am getting from everyone I might not have a problem with it. If I get a chance this weekend I will unbolt the drip pan/ mounting plate from the sliding drawer and raise the generator to see what the mounts look like.
Thanks for all the input.