Onan Ensign issues

No power at the marina last night so fired up the generator. Power came up to 110v on the gague. Under light load it puts out 110v however with a/c on it drops down to about 99v. I shut the a/c off and power went to 110v.

I noticed a few things: generator surges slightly. Under heavy load the engine does not pick up a lot of rpm, only slightly increases. I plugged in a set of string lights and noticed that they were flickering.

I think Onan built this generator for my boat and maybe a couple of others and said the hell with it as I cannot find f@#$ all information on it. I was able to locate an operator manual and it is of little help. Can anyone tell me if this generator has an adjustable voltage regulator? Any other things I can look at? Its not a weekend killer but it will suck to have to leave the beach every evening and head back to marina to plug in as power will be restored today at the marina.

Most likely it has a mechanical governor that can be adjusted by tightening a tension spring. As rpm increased so will voltage. Mechanical governors usually need a certain of oil inside to function properly as well.

hottoddie said:

Most likely it has a mechanical governor that can be adjusted by tightening a tension spring. As rpm increased so will voltage. Mechanical governors usually need a certain of oil inside to function properly as well.

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Thank you, we will try and adjust Governor. I fired up generator this morning and had 115v no load, full load was 108v at 58hz so probably don't need much adjustment. This gen set has not been ran in a while hoping it gets better as it is ran this weekend.

Adjusted governor. I now have 111v at full load. Thank you and have a great Memorial Day weekend.!