Road trek - under hood or propane?

[Sgp]

Any advice on which is the best generator option for a road trek - under hood generator or propane? Under hood would appear to be better, but I'm a newbie and totally clueless.

[booster]

Originally Posted by Sgp

Any advice on which is the best generator option for a road trek - under hood generator or propane? Under hood would appear to be better, but I'm a newbie and totally clueless.

There are lots of discussions here on that topic, and related things. You could start with some searches to see them.

I don't think you, or anyone here, will be able to give much guidance until you have an idea of how you will be using the the Roadtrek. Things like how long in on one place, how much offgrid vs having shore power, how far you drive and how often, solar amount if any, refrigerator type (3 way or compressor), air conditioning needs, amount of batteries and type.

All of this, and more, go into the mix of which system would probably be the best for you, and your use patterns. Other folks have different needs.

We just removed our Onan last year, in our 07 C190P Roadtrek, and went with a big battery bank, big shore charger/inverter, solar, and a large (not stand alone) engine alternator. It suits our style of travel well.

[ClassB4Me]

Originally Posted by booster

We just removed our Onan last year, in our 07 C190P Roadtrek, and went with a big battery bank, big shore charger/inverter, solar, and a large (not stand alone) engine alternator. It suits our style of travel well.

Wow.. That sounds like a major investment in money and labor. Is there post the describes in greater detail how the solution works for you?

[booster]

Originally Posted by ClassB4Me

Wow.. That sounds like a major investment in money and labor. Is there post the describes in greater detail how the solution works for you?

This pretty much covers the install, and some of how we use it.

http://www.classbforum.com/forums/f8...rade-4007.html

As to the rest of how it works for us, it is pretty much just having it cover our want and needs. We wanted at least 4-5 days off grid on just batteries, longer or forever if we have good sun. We have to have enough power for the compressor frig. Big enough inverter to run microwave occasionally. Faster shore charging, and even faster alternator charging. The "prime directive" was that all the charging sources would play well together, and all would have charging profiles based on the amps to the batteries for accurate control. We didn't want to give up any space if possible, and as it turned out we actually gained two outside storage areas that used to hold batteries without losing any other space.

[WJones]

I don't recall seeing a definitive answer as to any long term effects of adding a lot of idle time to the engine. If your engine generator is used to recharge the batteries when driving, this is obviously not an issue.
OK, I know, expecting a definite answer on any subject might be a stretch
William

[booster]

Originally Posted by WJones

I don't recall seeing a definitive answer as to any long term effects of adding a lot of idle time to the engine. If your engine generator is used to recharge the batteries when driving, this is obviously not an issue.
OK, I know, expecting a definite answer on any subject might be a stretch
William

That one is still up in the air, especially on the newer diesels, and particularly Mercedes. We have seen multiple versions of rules for idling from MB over the last couple of years, and you probably can find them in with a search. IIRC, most would say something no more than a couple of hours of idling without a 30 minute highway speed drive to regen the DPF and burn off carbon. Many, many folks are not going by those rules, it appears. The problem is that the failure (plugging) of the DPF is not an immediate thing, so we don't know if the strict rules are necessary, or not. Most likely, it would be a DPF failure at a lower mileage, maybe 50-75K miles, instead of 150K miles. At this point we don't have enough data to predict if the problem is real or not.

I don't think most gassers would have any real issues with long term idling, except maybe increased oil changes.