My Honda EU3000iS generator set up...

Danny Knaap had one on his Coronado and said it worked great. My only experience with a roof mount was in my ex father inlaw's RV. Other than being noisey with a lot of vibration,.. it worked well.

I dont want to do another window unit,.. the only other options would be an indoor upright which I already have 2 here in the house and they dont work that well. Or the roof mount.

I guess its something I'm going to have to research. There has to be a good roof mount that will work well enough to cool a sleeper. My first window unit wasnt that great either. I came across the one I have now on sale at Lowes and its been great.

Hurst

 

We haul BIG generators, mounted in 40' containers for Cat Entertainment services. They supply every size generator needed for all sorts of outdoor events. Their go to generator for small applications, where some juice is needed but too hard to route the cables is the Honda EU3000i. They have hundreds of them at every Cat Entertainment service location in the country. They just paint them black, like the big generators they use.

 

The air flow on a roof top unit is advertised in small print as CFM before the evaporator instead of CFM coming out the cold air vent. My experience is a 15,000btu rooftop unit is the equivalent to a 5,000btu window unit.

I ended up with a 15,000 BTU through the wall unit on the back wall of my truck. It's too much. 8,000 or 10,000 would be better. Nice when your sleeping but it gets too cold in the truck even though it has a thermostat. The cycle time is too long.

 

I have TRI-PACK on my truck and it's LOUD. It's not my first truck with APU and from mi experience they all loud. Now for the roof mounted RV AC units i had very good experience, I used to have 28' motorhome and 1 roof mounted unit had no problem keeping it cool on 95* days (i don't know how many BTU) Now i own small 16' fiberglass RV with coleman on the roof and it works very well.

 

I'll check BTU tomorrow

 

Keep in mind also that almost all truck roofs cannot support an AC unit without support. Any RV place will not guarantee the installation without it. They take your headliner off and install metal ribs. Without support the unit will bow the roof up and down going over bumps. From that point on it will leak.

 

That's little over the top, I don know of anyone who replaced an engine

 

My Rigmaster has been running fine for 10 years. Normal parts wearing out like any other engine. Just because you paid over $8,000 doesn't mean it will last forever without something breaking.

Having a real APU does have it's advantages.

. It's all automatic.

. Starts and stops when batteries need charging.

. Starts heater when temp falls below your setting instead of running all night

. Starts AC when temp rises above your setting and shuts off instead of running all night

. Runs off your tanks diesel fuel so no trips to the gas pumps at 2am

. Oil pan holds 5 quarts of oil

. Control everything with a touch of the button while in bed

. Truck alternator goes out you say. No problem. APU starts up without you even knowing it to keep the batteries charged.

. Leave your fridge running when you get home for a week and don't worry about the batteries.

. Leave your Espar heater set on 60 when you get home for a week. Never worry about killing the batteries and truck stays nice and warm in the winter.

 

Those are real advantages! Running on demand, backup for the truck alternator. , uses diesel fuel so no messing with gas, oil pan holding 5qts of oil over less than 1 for my generator. That to me is very nice. My generator only holds 0.6 qts of oil. Less than 1 qt for lubrication and cooling of internal parts. :-/ We'll see how it does over time, but I wish it held more.

No doubt, I'd rather have the apu.

My generator is wired in a cheater setup trying to mimic the on demand of APU.
When I first pull up and park for the night, the truck is precooled/heated from the truck ac. When I shut down, I'll turn on AC to 69 degrees and if it's less than 80 degrees outside when first parked, ac will cycle as needed throughout the night with just the battery banks. If hot, or during the day with sun beating down, that time can be reduced to less than 2.5-3 hrs before voltage on the truck falls below 12.5 v.

At 12.4 volts, the generator automatically starts and it powers the ac and battery charger to recharge the batteries. This is not a function of the generator, I had to add a voltage sensing switch into circuit.

The advantage is on mild nights, it is just all electric.. On warm nights, the generator may not start for 3-4 hrs, but when it does, it will run until I shut it off in the morning. I would like to add another circuit to shut it down when not needed, but I just haven't yet.

My next truck hopefully will be a fuel sipping light weight midroof ( I pull flatbed) with an apu, but for now, this setup was affordable and does the job even with the negatives.

 

That was my whole reason for going with the generator. Just weighing out the pro's and con's of each. The biggest factor was the initial cost involved to buy and install a diesel APU. The other was the costs involved with maintaining and servicing it.

You really cant go wrong either way. The money you save from not idling will eventually pay for itself in both cases.

If you do your homework and see first hand the actual units and how they perform and work and look beyond what the owner says,.. and develop your own unbias'd opinion yourself,. you will be miles ahead. Very few people will talk bad about something they spent a lot of money on. I would check out trucks for sale that have APU's in them,.. then fire up the APU. Check to see if the noise and vibration of that particular unit is acceptable. Then see if it will cool and heat well enough for you. Then make sure it will charge your batteries and provide enough (Inverter) power for what you need.

After all of that you should be able to make a very educated choice when buying a diesel powered APU.

I'm personally staying with the generator. Its been serving me well so far. Its very affordable and meets or exceeds all of my needs.

Hurst