Generator

[Dam Worker]

During our normal Memorial Day weekend camping trip, (boondocking) I had the usual smell of what I thought was the generator getting hot. This time it was smelling worse than normal so I started doing another investigation on where the smell was coming from. I could smell a burnt plastic smell unusually strong coming from the vents in the stairs. When I opened up the DS storage door I noticed that the wiring coming from the generator went into a metal junction box. Pretty typical except this time the box was to hot to touch. As I contemplated this I noticed the box said (30 amp) max on it. I thought that this was kind of strange as my generator is a 5500 watt Onan that was installed at the factory. I also noticed that the wiring coming out of the junction box was only 10 AWG. I am not an electrician but I do know that I only used 10 AWG for 30 amp circuits when wiring my house.
When everything had cooled off enough for me to open the junction box I found a glob of melted wires. The wire nuts were deformed and the only thing left on the biggest wire nut was the metal spring or threads. After cutting away burnt wire I redid everything and only used the generator for recharging the batteries and some microwave use, no hot water heater or fireplace. Keystone was at their normal service when I drop up and over the mountain to get repair parts and cell phone service. Biggest thing was they were happy that my unit did not catch on fire but other than that I need to take it to the dealership and have them look at it to determine if something was wrong.

As a few people on here say it is probably better to just fix stuff yourself as it will be done correctly the first time.

Tom Marty