Two summers ago I went to fire the onan up and run the air.     Generator fired up as usual. But no power inside.     

I installed a bridge rectifier and still no power. 

The next year,  after a super hot week in south Dakota, it was eveident that I needed to do something about the generator!

I pulled the onan out and found a broke wire in tge “field coil”

Then the motor blew up and this project got sidelined 

Fast forward to 2019.   I have found an field coil.  But I also had robbed some parts off my onan to help another gmc.  I had also bought an onan 2800 microlite.    And then a ev6010 fell into my lap.  

Been at a gmc’s garage out in seattle a few years.  It was also propane powered.  

GMC owners at their best,  I was aware this generator might come my way last fall, so in talking to another GMc owner, he had a

Parts generator and hooked me up with most of what I needed for converting it back to gas.  

In talking to tge ev6010 expert, he claimed that propane is no good for these as the valves burn up.   I checked compression and all seemed ok on this unit. 

Removed the rest of the onan.   Also the batteries need to get moved an inch closet to the rear of coach for honda to fit. 

Cleaned up the compartment and added some 10mm sound proofing/heat shield stuff I bought off amazon. 

There is a good install manual for the honda.  I  was lucky the PO of the honda had already used the template and made the plywood mounting base.  

I missed taking the photos of the back to gas conversion.  Parts are easy to find for the honda- but spendy.  The propane was feeding the same original honda gas carb,  but was missing the float bowl and a 1/2 dozen other parts such as fuel pump, lines,

Pump bracket.   

For some reason this ev6010 A/C generation wiring was all messed up.  Video’s from pinellas power products, allowed me to fix that too.  I still have no idea what was going on with that as they had all sorts of things backwards and even an extra transformer wires in. 

Fits nice.    The onan just had 2 wires feeding the power plug to the coach.   About 3”

Inside the conduit, they split the 2 wires(hot and neutral) to 4. (2 hots. Neutral and the ground).   It took some yanking, but I pulled that out and pulled in the 4 separate cables coming off the Honda.    

It has a honda muffler.  But I quickly seen that it was not going to fit.  The macerator for sure was in the way,  but the frame was as well.  There are a couple different mufflers for this, so curious to see what others have done.  So a trip to the exhaust shop to have the muffler installed was needed:

Need 8’ of wire, but should of bought 10.    It was close and could use a few more inches at each end.  I installed a junction box, and right now the cables just pass through it.  If I ever have to pull out the honda, i will cut the wires at that box.  

The honda is running and seems to be running well.   I have not run it more then 30

Minutes at a time.    It is Louder then I remember.  It is not so much exhaust as it the entire thing.  The sound of the muffler does not seem that bad??

I did add some more soundproofing to ghe door.  But you have to have air flow, so cant seal it up entirely.    Driving down the road it is fine as there are plenty of other noises that mask the sound.     But at 6000 watts, it rubs both A/C’s without missing a beat.  And that is what I need.    Lots of power. 

I am still going to fix my onan.  But installing this honda was a little faster then refurbishing the onan.   That will be a winter project I think. 

Microlevel

One of our GMC Greater Midwest Classics members has designed a new air leveling system, and at our spring rally I had the assistance of Keith Vasilakes in person to assist me in installing  his "MicroLevel" air leveling system in my coach.   Keith had shipped me the wiring harness a month earlier, and I had installed the harness a few weeks prior to our Rally.  His harness was a simple task to install at home with the GMC on ramps.   It consists of just a simple signal cable that follows along the brake lines  that go to the rear wheel wells, then up to the dash.

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My 75 coach had a PO added electro-level 1 system installed that consisted of  standard EL1 switches located where the old the power level valves used to be with a stack of 6 air valves mounted to an aluminum plate near the wiper motor.   My air system has never worked consistently over the 9 years I have owned my coach.  I have worked on it many times, but it seemed  I was always chasing leaks and problems, and forced  to go back to my marked wood stick to set height ride height before i drove away.

  

Keith’s microlevel system has some great features and as it turns out,  it is not difficult to install as proven since we installed the system at the campsite in a few hours, with only one trip to the hardware store for some misc. brass fittings.

The first thing we had to do, was re-plumb my 6 solenoids into 4.  There are now 2 solenoids  to dump air, and the other 2 add air to the airbags.  His system uses just a single airline from the compressor to the air valves and 2 airlines leaving the air valves, each one going to one of the 2 airbags.   There is a set of wires that go to the "microlevel" controller that fits neatly in the dash of coaches with the dash mounted air controls, and we needed to tie in a constant 12v and a ignition switched 12v, as well as re-wire the relay to the compressor as the microlevel now controls when the compressor has power.

The Micro-level system comes with a keyfob with 4 buttons for  right side up and down and left side up and down.   So you can manually adjust the airbag height on each side remotely.  That feature is very handy for filling up with fuel, and for dumping the black tank.   Microlevels’s main feature is automatic control for both "travel" and "camp/auto level".       Once it is calibrated  for your coach's ride height, and also calibrated when your coach is level, witch is simple to do,  it controls the coach’s height automatically.   When you press the "travel button"   the coach goes to the set ride height.   When you press the  Camp Button it automatically levels your coach.   

 

For this to work, his system uses electronic ride height sensors that must be installed in place of the original ride height valves:

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When I started working with the airlines, I quickly found that the old air lines were brittle in many places that I was unaware of    So I decided to replace them.  The micro level only needs one line to each air bag.  So that really simplifies the lines you actually need to replace.  I am guessing most coaches are the same and the plastic lines are one bump away from a failure.     

 

 

More information on the Mirco-level system can be found here:
http://www.gmcmotorhomemarketplace.com/vasilakes/microlevel_intro.pdf