Home-buit APU?

The mac and cheese recipe sounds pretty wicked but the parking lot urine smell would kill my appetite

 

This was, afterall the original question.

Fact is that there are plenty of us out there that have been doing exactly that with great results for many moons! There's always one that says his store-bought gizzmo is better and your stupid if you don't agree with him, but guys like those never invent anything on their own, they just buy stuff someone else invented.

delta 5, in 2000 I did my 1st. home made apu system using a used rv a/c, stand alone 1500 watt heater, and powered them with a 2500 watt colemen genset. (Had all this stuff already so the out of pocket $ was zero.) In the 1st.year it saved me about 8 grand. (fuel was about a buck & a half a gal.) When the coleman went south, I bought a Kawasaki generator ($960.00) which after 6000+ hours is about worn out. I had several trucks, (customer owned) that I used various generators on but the best were always Honda or Kawasaki. I just retired the Kaw and replaced it with a new Honda EP-2500-CX. ($1068.00) It's mounted in a box on the frame, and the gas tank is mounted behind the cab on top of the frame-rails. Its so lo-profile its hard to know its there.

Heres what ya need to know,,,FMCSA says you can't have a remote gas tank unless the generator has a fuel pump. They also say that you can't have more than 8 gallons of gas on the CMV.
Since the remote tank has a petcock that seperates the fuel supply between the tank & engine, NONE of the CVSA/D.O.T. inspectors that have inspected my trucks over the years have had any issues with the system fuel pump or not!

Yea,,,you can do this yourself for WAY less than $2500.00

 

Not one inspector ever even mentioned my Honda EU3000IS that was mounted on a bracket right to the frame where an apu would mount.

Since I'm semi retired I'll build anyone interested an air cooled diesel powered 6KW generator in an enclosed polished aluminum box with custom frame mounts, install the control panel, wiring and AC outlets in the sleeper, a shore power connection and a 13,500BTU Coleman Roughneck AC unit with heat strips for $5900 + or - depending on what else you might want. It has no cooling system to deal with, will freeze you in the summer or cook you in the winter, power almost anything short of a household and burn less fuel with less maintenance than any APU.

 

Kudos to you Sir.
I sold several systems myself as you are suggesting, (customer specified genset) but the fact is that your & my price is too LOW! Some people just ain't happy unless they paid too much, then when they finally do figure it out,,,ain't happy til everyone else is misserable too.

edit; what diesel genset are you talking about ?

 

When reading some information about what happened with the BK of Rigmaster. While more complicated than just putting it down to one single item, it had some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings. Walmart rated it the best available while doing their tests. BUT the lack of warranty infastructure kept them from landing any fleet accounts to speak of.

So while someone with technical knowledge can put all the parts and pieces together for less than a Carrier or TK, what can not be put together is getting it repaired, under warranty in Denver when it was pieced together in IN. A breakdown in summer or winter with weeks before being able to get it fixed can eat up all the savings in a hurry.

I don't have the skill or the patience to do this myself. I do know people that would do this. But that is a lot of money for something that has limited repair and warranty options.

Would probably think differently if I was able to do the work myself.

 

Bill, guess I'm not really sure what you are refering to above. I know very little about the pros-n-cons between the high-end apus. (Actually I couldn't care less which one is better because they all cost way too #### much to even get my attention.) What I was talking about was doing it yourself for ALOT less $ than any of those.

You can buy a good self-contained generator for a grand, mount it on the frame behind the cab, run an extension cord into the truck, and run almost anything you want. Warranty? How good is Hondas for example? Infrastructure? Betcha theres alot more Honda shops around the country than there is carrier, thermoking, etc combined.

A $1,000.00 generator, $500.00 worth of a/c, heater, & a cord will save an o/o several thousand dollars a year!

Not being sarcastic here,,,just don't see the problem.

 

That home built will never last as long as a real APU that has 2 cylinders. It won't be diesel. It won't get fuel from your tanks and you will be filling up a gas can twice a day if your lucky to be in a truck stop and not a rest area or bum F*** noplace. It won't monitor your batteries and start up automatically. It won't charge your batteries because it has no alternator...blah blah blah.....So you pretty much end up with a Hillbilly Billy Bob solution that will most likely start on fire as they are not meant to be run so much.

 

Yer right as rain on all your comments EXCEPT the last one!
These gensets ain't no more likely to burst into flames than yer ole-ladys car is.
I don't understand why it is that no matter what anyone comes up with that ain't what you are doing, results in you criticizing them. Why is that? Personally I don't care what you think. I'm glad you like that high $ apu ya got! Happy for ya!

oops,,,I was wrong,,,yer not right on all yer comments except the last one. Sorry!

My generators burn 2 gal. every 12 hours. With a 4 gal. tank I'm pretty sure it runs 24 hours. With a little planning ahead it's no problem to drop the trailer and bob tail up to a gas pump every couple days. I'll do that to save 8-10 grand any day!

 

I've seen first hand too many Honda's go up in flames and one recently next to me. Got my truck out of there in the nick of time. Woke up the driver, put out the fire and he never said thanks.

 

They ARE NOT extended run engines like an APU with twin cylinder and either water or air cooled. PERIOD