These are tips to help with repairing parts of the Electrical systems.
Don’t let this be you 
Go to Fire Suppression and take a read.
Alternator light circuit rewire
(This is a problem we all face)
Can you say, “burn down my coach”? If you do not read this vital information and do what it says, you run this risk. I hate people who use “doom & gloom” to attract attention but in this case the fears are very well founded. There are others who approach this issue in other ways and I appreciate and respect their views BUT, this issue is too serious to wonder if you are safe or not. We totally bypass the problem by rewiring the alternator light circuit– take it out of the circuit to make sure there will not be a problem— and you should to.
Go to Alt. light circuit refit for this information. Please do this. There, I’ve said all I can about this– it’s now up to you.
1 Wire, second design Delco alternator
Our original GM alternator was a first design unit replacing generators. As we all know, generators were very mechanical and would not charge the battery at idle. When alternators came onto the scene they WOULD charge at idle so everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Problem was though these alternators were still controlled by an on/off regulator tricked in chargin at idle, this alternator running at low RPM trying to max output into a discharged battery may burn up. Yes and too many batteries, too many circuit draws at idle is why we go through a pile of alternators.
GM realized this in mid production of our alternator casing and upgraded to a stronger 130amp diode pack AND a variable regulator which would limit the alternator output at lower RPM. This alternator though still needed to be fooled into working at idle thus it still needed the notorious “alternator light circuit” above because the nichrome wire GM use to fool the alternator to work got hot itself in our motorhome application and was a fire danger as you read above.
We have added an additional feature to our alternators in turning off the “fool circuit” to the alternator and we have the alternator turn on itself though an internal circuit………in other words the only wire you hook up is the large output wire. Brillian!
These alternator are $195 exchange. You will also need a $125, 160 amp combiner module and some light power circuit rewiring. We remove our trusted blue finned isolator in favor of this 160 combiner. Yes, not a cheap modification but loosing another alternator or worse yet melting your wire harness from a burned nichrome wire circuit…..most of our restoration get this feature. If you would like to talk more about this give me a call…..321-299-5707
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Onan “Power Drawer” generator primer circuit
If you run the original Onan generator, you need to do this!
So there you are, it’s hot outside and you need to make the roof AC dump ice cubes, you are on the road…. this means that ole troll Onan back there has GOT to work! So you mosy over to that remote panel there at the door. You sneak up on it, give it an affectionate rub, take a deep breath and push the start switch. Will it start? Man, I hope so and you hold that button in harder hoping it will help somehow.
Does this sound familiar? By definition an old generator is not usually kept at the American Red Cross waiting to be used in a disaster and brother when it’s hot… it’s a disaster if you can’t cool the place down. This is a very simple way to “hot wire” the electrical system in your generator to force it to run. And in the event that the generator will only run with it hot wired, pull out the momentary switch in this circuit… install an on/off toggle switch and run your generator that way. Click Onan generator primer circuit for this information.
Repairing the air ride – a big failure is the switches at the dash. Click Air Ride repair:Electro-Level switch rebuild for the fix
Updating the Systems Monitor -directions for installing a new systems monitor
