superhawk996

Sounds like lots of monkey rigging went on. The solenoid input should be connected straight to the auxiliary battery +. My guess is that they wired it to the isolator input/engine alternator output, if I'm correct the generator won't crank without turning on the jumper switch. It's also possible that it just has a shitty connection somewhere, but I don't know why flipping the switch would cure either of those problems unless the solenoid is connected to multiple battery + connections.

EVERY RV HAS AN ON BOARD CHARGER THAT RUNS OFF THE GENERATOR. I had to shout because it seems like you're not understanding that. Any time the generator is running the rig's charger is charging the battery. The generator isn't doing the charging, it is powering the rig's battery charger to do it. When the rig is plugged into an outlet at a camp ground the same charger is running. Most of the stuff in an RV is run off the battery so it needs to have a charger even if you're plugged in at a campground. The only AC powered stuff installed in the rig is the air conditioner and microwave, everything else runs off the battery. Typically we run it 2-3 times/day for a few minutes each time; make toast in the morning, possibly microwave something, and to run the cigarette machine. That's not enough to fully recharge the battery, but enough to keep things working fine 'till it comes home. Then it gets plugged into an outlet in the back yard and the on-board charger brings the battery back to 100% and keeps it there, ready for the next outing. Are you sure your generator is an RV unit? Not something that someone used for powering an RV at some time, but a generator actually made for installation in an RV. I'm guessing not, but am very curious.

Makes me wanna drag my Convert out and fix it up. It arrived dead, the seller didn't send the title with it but it would be coming soon. I jumped in and got it running, then set off fixing various stuff. After lots of questionable delays I started to think that the title would never show up so I stopped working on it. By the time the title arrived I had lost enthusiasm and it hasn't come back. I took a very short ride around the block, the 'automatic' transmission is interesting to ride.

Is your cart generator a unit that was pulled from an RV? Post a pic please. Mine is 120v only. I've never seen an RV that uses 240 nor an RV generator that was labeled as having 240. I don't let it run all night in the desert, I run it as needed for doing stuff needing AC and occasionally just to recharge the battery. Like all RV's, the rig has a battery charger that runs off the gen. I won't run it disconnected from the battery out of fear that something could be damaged, but I might check for a charging output at some point just for shits. From many RV experiences I know that if they do have a charging circuit it's a very small amperage that'll do nothing noticeable for an RV battery.

Anyone who uses pipe wrenches to do automotive work is a total fucking hack!!! I'm no steamfitter either, and I have a large array of pipe wrenches; sometimes it's the 'right' tool for the job.

Disconnected from the RV?

Is it an RV generator and how have you determined that it charges? If it's a portable generator with electric start then it needs to have a battery charging circuit. I have a nearly identical unit as Joe's in my motorhome and I'm pretty sure it doesn't charge. Pretty sure my previous MH (older kohler) didn't either. Neither did my friend's much newer Onan. It's possibly that they all had low amperage charging circuits so I never noticed it. I never thought to check because in an RV it doesn't need it so I just assumed it wouldn't have it. I imagine that if it had a charging circuit it would be fused, but maybe they didn't think that was necessary.

Re-thinking this, there might only be two hots, a neutral, and a ground for your 4 leads. Crappy that they made all 4 of them white. If you don't figure it out and don't find a schematic let me know and I'll open the junction box on mine to see what's there. It won't be the same since I don't have 240, but I'll at least be able to see if there's a ground or just hot and neutral to help narrow down yours.

After another sip of rum my brain reactivated. Probing the wires with both voltmeter leads should show one pair as 240...I think.

I don't know a lot about AC electricity- I would start with a voltmeter, one lead to the metal of the machine (assuming it's the ground to the circuit) and then probe each wire. My guess, if it's working, is that you'll find 3 that show 120ish volts. Two of the 'hot' leads will be the 240 and the third will be the 120 hot, the dead one will be the 120 neutral. I think you could take any of the hot leads to get 120, along with the neutral, but to get 240 I think it has to be two 120 leads that are out of phase with eachother and I don't know how you'd figure that part out. I guess you could start grabbing pairs of wires and see which pair herts twice as much 🙂

The metal conduit at upper right is the power out going to the junction box at far left, from there it goes to the rig's panel. The red switch at the lower right of the box is my add-on fuel pump control switch. The replacement Facet pump. The mounting holes lined up, I re-used the inlet fitting from the original, added the outlet fitting to match the original feed tube to the carb. The thick red wire was an add-on to feed power to the trailer connector, tapping into the generator feed was the easiest source.

Pretty sure they are and they'd exit through a small hole on the right. Why cut...maybe it was a replacement unit and they didn't need power so didn't bother connecting them. Maybe there's a short somewhere and they didn't need power so it was the easy cure. Maybe some totally dumb reason. The choke heater wire comes from the control box and I think I saw it laying towards the cylinder head under the intake manifold. It'll be energized any time the engine is running.

You asked about this thing. It's almost definitely for rotating the vertical steel beam which I assume is the boom shaft letting you spin around in circles....yeeehaaw! Assuming the van doesn't have outriggers and there's someone with a high gravitational potential in the bucket it could be a fun ride. It might be limited to just a small side to side movement as a safety to not flop the van over. Roll video when you test out it's capabilities.

Boring safety tips. Never go up without someone on the ground or available to call, assuming you carry your phone and have service where you're working. There might be an emergency release valve to let the boom down, learn where it is so you can tell your rescuer. If it doesn't have one, figure out which fitting to loosen to let the boom down and keep a wrench for it in the truck.

I'm guessing the rig would have originally been equipped with an automatic on board battery charger. It might be hidden somewhere, or might explain some of the mystery wires. If you find a set of AC and DC wires near eachother somewhere, that's where the charger used to live. The DC side might be + and - wires, or just a + and they used chassis ground for the -. In a normal work crew scenario I assume they'd have the gen running the whole time they're working so it just needed a small charger to keep up with the small running demands. For intermittent start/stop use there's no telling how big of a charger you'd need without knowing the run times and battery capability. Assuming the emergency start solenoid works and you start a job with both batteries charged up, running an emergency start lead to the bucket is the cheapest solution to avoid being stuck in the air. If you don't plan to run power tools from the bucket cut the AC power wires off. Or just make sure they're not damaged/monkey rigged to turn the bucket into your electric chair. Upside is you'd be closer to heaven, but that might not be your path 🙂

You have a generator right there that'll power the charger. They installed a generator so that the worker could use power tools. Other option was to install a gas powered hydraulic pump and a separate generator.

The service manual covers my 4.0 BFA-1Rxxx RV unit, but not his 4.0 BFA-3CRxxx. The only obvious differences I see is that his has an oil filter and 120/240v output instead of my 120v only. The rest of it is probably the same, but dunno. The parts book does cover his -3CRxxx. I assume the "C" is for commercial, but I've been assuming it was a commercial duty unit from the start so maybe that's why my head is stuck on that. It could mean anything.

Ok, I was originally thinking it used an electric pump for the hydraulics and the generator powered that. So the electric generation portion is just to be able to run power tools. The isolator automatically charges both batteries from the van engine without letting either battery drain the other one when the engine is off. The switch should activate the solenoid to connect the two batteries together for 'emergency starting' if the battery you need goes dead....basically it's remote control jumper cables. The tether for holding the switch leads me to believe that the isolator stopped working, or maybe it was rigged so that everything could run with only one battery or one good and one shitty battery. Ideally there would be a lead in the bucket to the 'emergency start' solenoid, that would solve the dead battery while stuck in the air problem...as long as the switch in the cab wasn't locked on with the tether. There's a few ways to solve the battery discharge problem, a basic battery charger is probably the cheapest & easiest.

It makes 120v, and/or 240v AC, not sure if it'll do both simultaneously or if it has to be wired for one or the other. There's no 12v. DC output that I know of. They're mostly used in RVs which have on board battery chargers powered off the gen, but there could be an option for a 12v output that mine doesn't have. The points are inside the small rectangular metal box to the right of the carb, I think it's a single screw holding the cover down. The choke 'should' be automatic and works pretty well when everything's adjusted right, I see yours has been disassembled. For occasional use I guess it's no biggie as long as you're not in the air with it off long enough for it to cool down and not restart without the choke. The carb should have a mixture screw on the bottom (main jet adjustment), I don't think it has a low speed mixture adjustment. There's no starter motor, it uses the generator as a motor to spin the engine, that's why it typically starts cranking kinda softly and ramps up to speed rather than the normal instant crank speed. The points & pump should only get power while cranking and while running, when it's off power is automatically killed to them. There's brushes in the gen that are supposed to be checked/replaced every XX hours. I've never done this on any gen and have never encountered ones that wore out. This all assuming it's the same as mine, it appears to be other than the oil filter. My guess is that's part of a 'commercial duty' upgrade vs. my RV/consumer grade unit. IIRC it took me a fair bit of digging to find a free manual online, if I find that link I'll post it. The 'norm' for generators this size is a single cylinder running at 3600RPM, this is a twin running 1800. Smoother, quieter, theoretically more fuel efficient. I had a rough gallon per hour number on my buddy's similar unit and IIRC it was well under 1 GPH at our typical light load use. The van engine at idle will probably be around 1-1.5 GPH, plus the wear & carbon that happens during extended idle, I wouldn't wanna leave it running either. I just noticed the metal plate attached to the right side and there appears to be a round thing sticking out in the middle of it, is that a pulley? Does it have a working hour meter?

And if there's an external switch that powers the coil it's probably gonna cook it and the points so get rid of it or run it up to the bucket. And name: Ole bucket. It's a bucket truck, it's old, calling it an old bucket is not an insult, and it's few syllables.

So I'm guessing the generator runs an AC powered electric pump.-? Plug an old school battery charger into it so that when it's running it's also charging the battery(ies). I say old school cuz most modern ones require you to press buttons every time it's powered up. Any charger that starts running as soon as you put the cord into the wall hole will work, that's basically what'll be happening every time you fire up the gen to run the pump. As for it drawing power when shut off, it shouldn't. While it's running you'll be powering the coil and fuel pump, when stopped there should be no draw. If the coil and/or pump are wired to run off some other switch that has to be turned on before starting the gen then it's been nigger rigged and will draw power the whole time that switch is on. Tips: If it ever starts acting like it's starving for gas like the carb is clogged, but it's not, it could be the intake manifold. It's a two piece design (top and bottom halves) and eventually the sealant gives and you get a vacuum leak(s). That was a bitch to figure out. New manifolds apparently don't exist, NOS are hen's teeth, used is probably just a band-aid. I split mine and re-sealed it with Seal-All glue and it's holding up so far, several months. Second is the fuel pump. They're very good, but when it dies the 'proper' replacement is spendy. Generic parts store pumps might draw too much power for the circuit, don't have very good lift so it might not work depending on how high the gen is above the tank, and make too much pressure so you'd have to add a regulator and do some extra plumbing. After a ton of searching I bought an aircraft fuel pump that had the right output pressure, huge lift ability, low draw, was fairly easy to fit, and most importantly it was way less $. If I find the info I'll add it. Everything about that gen looks identical to mine except that mine doesn't have an oil filter, I guess you got the fancier one. If you want a project: I added a 3 way switch to the fuel pump. 'Automatic', it acts just like factory. 'Off' to let the carb run dry at the end of a trip and prevent buildup issues. 'Prime' to not have to crank it for several seconds while waiting for the carb to fill. None of that is necessary, they work perfectly fine, but not being about to drain or prime bugged me and now I feel better about it.

Being a paper guy, if have an electronic manual it generally gets printed. I might only do the relevant pages like Carlos, but if it's something I own I'm probably printing the whole thing because I dislike and distrust the electronic version. Dislike because I don't have a 'shop friendly' device to view it on, and distrust because something might happen and it vanishes from the computer. For the Talon I printed the whole thing so I can keep a copy in the motorhome which is generally what I use when I take it out.

I had a large collection of the Chilton Professional manuals that I now have just a few of. I put them on CL and some dude bought them as general reading/learning material for a couple/few hundred bucks, don't recall exactly how much. He also took a couple of the non-pro manuals that were on cars that interested him as well as some on engineering or electronics or something like that.

Yea, but early stuff. I think late 80s to early 90s

Nope. Camry's too gay to own and the truck is so simple it's gay to need a manual. 😛 I just realized that I used to always try to get a manual when I bought something new to me and haven't in many years, spoiled by the interwebs.