Look here for the photos:

Click here for the photos:

Here's the story that goes with the photos:

I started wondering how I was going to hang the Onan on my frame. A trip to the iron yard fixed that question in an instant... two shelf supports from old pallet racks were the perfect thing! I dragged them home and got out the cutting torch and the welder...pretty soon I had a very nice hangar set. This was bolted to the frame with four 3/4" grade 8 bolts.

In it goes... almost as good as a slide-in!! (aren't bobcats handy!!)

The photo "NewExhaustReady2" shows the propane regulator as well as the 3" exhaust pipe I have now welded floor-to-roof, which I will talk about later...

Propane carb photos show some more of the propane installation... regulator mounted to the underside of the bus, stainless flex bringing the propane to it, and the safety shutoff valve.

Inside the bus, my control switch is mounted on the dash with a lamp that shows me it's working (is it really that quiet?? hee hee :)

Above the driver are, from left to right, AC amp meter, AC volt meter, Genset hourmeter, AC frequency meter, and finally the switch that changes over from shore to gene power. The switch is an industrial thing (Kraus and Naimer, Series C42) that I got from ebay (like almost everything else on the bus) that swaps the Hot, neutral and ground leads to the apropriate configuration as selected. The whole issue of hooking the ground to frame, etc is easliy solved by this switch which is 3 poles double throw, and can handle 63 amps per pole.

It might seem that the frequency, amp and voltmeters are a bit geeky, but they were afterthoughts that I installed after a experiencing nasty... I was plugged in at a campground for a week and on day 2 I noticed that my AC was running horribly, and starting to smell really bad. Upon investigation it turns out that the entire campground was so remote that they ran it on three giant diesel generators, two of which were out of service and the third was in trouble. When I figured out that there was a problem, I found that the whole camp was running on 45 hz at 100 volts... no wonder my AC was trying to burn itself up!! I ended up fixing the gene for the camp- turns out they'd never cleaned the air inlet to the gene's motor and it was so caked with leaves and crap after 5 years that it was totally plugged and the diesel was actually sucking crankcase oil thru it's turbo, and running with so little power left that it could no longer regulate frequency!! Once I got it all cleaned out, it came to life at 60hz and was perfect.

I took a look at Gene 2 and 3, both of which would evidently only run for a half hour then overheat.... same thing only this time it was diesel crap plugging up about 90% of their radiators. By the time I left that campground, I was a hero, all 3 gene's worked and the power was correct.

If I'd had my meters installed at the time I would have seen the problem in a heartbeat instead of spending an hour thinking it was me. They will also keep tabs on the Onan very nicely...


Exhaust: Originally I thought I'd be real trick and run the onan exhaust right into my engine exhaust pipe. It worked fine with the one "but".... when I do this, the velocity of the onan's puff-puff gets lost in the 4" main pipes, and the onan's exhaust just "dribbles" out onto the ground and stays around to usually stink me out unless there's a wind.
SO as shown in the earlier photo, I welded a piece of 3" EMT conduit tubing from floor to roof inside my bus, and inside of that I put a 1-3/4" exhaust pipe for the onan that carries it to the roof. For the flexible exhaust hose, I scored a nifty stainless steel bellows surrounded by stainless braid, that was originally a high vacuum coupling in some thick film sputtering machine. It's probably a $500 piece but it's perfect for this and cost me ten bucks at a scrapyard. It's about 3 feet long and super flexible so it should kill any vibrations that would get into the bus body... Also makes the plumbing job pretty brainless....

The interior shot shows the pipe running floor to ceiling next to my fridge.

Side note, I took Fast Fred's advice and got a Nicro Fico solar powered vent for the propane fridge. I take air in at the floor level from interior coach air (everyone says don't do it but I have had zero problems doing it this way... and the fridge doesn't blow out when I'm on the road now...yeah, I keep it lit while driving...)
So instead of that giant ugly side vent most people have for the fridge, all there is on the outside of my bus is that nice little vent on the roof....

The last photo is a recent ebay score, a spring loaded retractible cord reel with slip rings than can handle 40 amps. On it is 80' of that nice 10ga extension cord that I got from ebay a few months ago. When the rains stop and I can crawl under the bus again, that will get mounted near the front somewhere and become my retractible shore power cable...