How rare is this

[Farmall m farmer]

I bought it for $20 from a friend no idea how long it’s been sitting it has spark I haven’t taken apart the carb don’t know about compression it had a stuck valve that I broke a new one is $60 I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth fixing I have no idea if the generator works I have a project for the generator part if it works but I don’t want to take it apart if it’s rare the gas tank is clean too

 

[Gambles]

In my opinion (just mine and mine only), these older ones are noisy gas guzzlers. I have an Onan that was part of a camper unit. It’s neat to look at, but a modern generator is far better. If you get yours going, great. But I wouldn’t spend much money getting there. Good luck.

 

[scootergmc]

To answer your question, they're not that rare but those Onan gensets get junked all the time.

I wouldn't waste my time with it. You'd be better off with a running Briggs or Wisconsin.

 

[Farmall m farmer]

I had a idea of taking the generator part and hooking it up to a inverter on the front of my 110 as a mobile generator that’s easy to move around

 

[DanielW]

If you can get the speed right and governed you might make an interesting project and something useful. But I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your '110'. The best thing about many of those Onan units is that they were built to run continuous duty: I have a 10 kW Onan I got a few years ago: A friend's father said they used those models on the oil fields for a few tasks. He said they'd start them up, keep the gas topped up, and run them for about a month before anyone would think of shutting down to check oil, etc. Not sure if the smaller ones like yours were built the same or not.

But ultimately I'd have to agree with others: Not really worth much as a stand-alone generator. If it's anything like mine, it's an absolute pig on gas. I bought a 5 kW inverter unit from Walmart a couple of years ago for $1000. It does all I need and more: It uses a fraction of the fuel, and because it's an inverter I can run modern electronics off it without risk of damage. And it's uber quiet. The Onan is so loud you practically need to be in another county to have a conversation when it's running.

 

[John T]

Ive owned several older ONAN RV Generators, they were 4000 Watt, two cylinder, ran at 1800 RPM . They were MUCH MUCH quieter then their replacement the ONAN so called Micro Quiet which was a one cylinder screaming at 3600 RPM grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr My current RV has a new Cummins Onan one cylinder 3600 RPM 2800 Watt

John T

 

[Farmall m farmer]

There John Deere 110s