Author Topic: Honda eu2000i Generator Truck Mount  (Read 2821 times)

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Offline MadScientist267

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Honda eu2000i Generator Truck Mount
« on: November 02, 2015, 10:15:38 pm »
Kinda picking up but off in a new direction, the engine is mostly sorted out now and running well. I'll continue my findings with that aspect specifically on the other thread... For this one, I'm going to focus on how it's being mounted to the truck.

For some reason, I didn't get a picture of the unit when I first got it... The first pics were of it basically disassembled, so I'm cheating a little bit and bringing you a picture "from the future" here. This was after reassembly and even a little bit beyond that...

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The unit is fairly well "loved" haha.. and it's feet were no exception. Only one complete foot remained, the other 3 were nubs. It became clear fairly early on (and really even before I got it) that I'd be slinging it under the truck... But I had plans to remove the shell and basically make it less appealing on several levels, and kinda roll my own. Not without completely reinventing the wheel... They're made with the unibody spirit, and rely heavily on the shell being in place to hold them together. This really only left the feet as anchor points, so I ran with it...

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It's essentially a special nut incorporated into the plastic of the case. After pondering for a bit, ideas began to shape up, and the shock mount system was conjured up. Using some everyday hardware, cut pieces of foam mat, some rubber sleeving, and some of that "silicone spaghetti", it came together something like this...

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There was a little bit too much flexing between the bolt and the generator for my comfort level.. leverage had increased the forces the case saw when pressure was put on the mounting clip. So I came up with this, which helped a lot...

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Another one of course made to go across the front... The sides are inherently reinforced by the angle that the brackets bolt to.

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Next came figuring out exactly how to get it on the sliders. A quick "history" on what led to the current design first...

The unit has to be mounted in such a way that the cooling fan assists with keeping the area under the skirt of the truck free from exhaust. The design of the generator itself is clever in many ways, the cooling system being no exception. It sucks in massive quantities of air at one end, and discharges the hot air along with the exhaust at the other. It was found early on that the exhaust would pool under the skirt unless it was oriented to point directly to the side. When set up like that however, exploiting the cooling system is very effective and keeps what amounts to a slight negative pressure under there, pulling air in so exhaust can't find it's way into the box nearly as easily.

Unfortunately, however, this presents a tricky mounting issue... The gas cap, starting rope, and kill switch are all located toward the front (intake) side of the generator. Combine all of these implications, and there really was no option other than to have it slide out. A trip to the local paint 'em up store and for 20 bucks, reasonable hardware was acquired for the job... Nearly everything else was already laying around somewhere or another.

We came up with a decent design I think (hope LOL)... This is a shot of one of the mockup sessions, this particular one leading to the end design.

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(Continued . . .)
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Honda eu2000i Generator Truck Mount
« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2015, 11:30:41 pm »
(. . . Continued)

We used some of the leftover rail stock from the PV as a basis for the truck side of the framework, and with a little bit of modification, it will suit the purpose well. They will support the two sides of the sliders. "Above" that, things will be transitioning to steel, and that part of the design is still being hammered down, getting rid of all the gotchas and such.

Another little sub-sub-project was the doing the wiring modifications. It will be controlled by the Pi, eco mode and kill. Sadly, electric start is out of the question... there are hacks out there, but way too involved for the time I have to get this all together, not even to mention cost... But it will be sent one of those two signals when necessary... It defaults to Eco throttle mode, as normally it doesn't even need to throttle up at all to charge the batteries and run the base loads. With the advent of the larger unit (originally I was going for the 1000W version), electric became viable as an alternate means of heating while on generator and not just shore power.

However, these units don't like going from nil to all out. It's recommended (and I agree) that it be put in full speed mode before applying a load closer to their limits. It needs the extra spunk to maintain regulation and not puke on itself in the process. The Pi will be in control of the electric heat anyway, so it will spool the generator up before turning on the heat each cycle, and let it simmer back down in between.

Kill of course will be activated when various metrics point to the trend that it's no longer needed, and can be shut down to save fuel. This will be nice at night... won't have to worry about it sitting there just burning up fuel if I need to run it for a little bit (after a battery charge is initiated for example). I can just go on ahead to sleep (or try to LOL that's a different story completely) and not have to keep an eye on things to time the shutdown myself.

Here you can see the relays that control both functions, placed where the "battery charging" outlet once was...

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One little annoyance of sorts that came up while looking at various wiring options was how the parallel operation connections work. There's absolutely no magic here in terms of what needs to happen. The two banana jacks are connected across the output wiring coming from the inverter, essentially directly in parallel with the outlet. Interestingly, they are connected *before* the breaker, which is rated at 20A. Long story short, this means that even in parallel, more than 20A isn't happening for any length of time from a pair of these, as the breaker in the unit that has the load plugged in would pop. Not sure who didn't do the math, but even I'm not that bad at it... 13.3A + 13.3A = 26.6A.

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If you happen to have 2 or more of these units, I sincerely would recommend sticking it to the man - Honda is notorious for this too - Don't shell out the 50 bucks or near enough on their "special" cables, only to get short changed in output. There are numerous hacks out there that accomplish the *exact* same thing, much cheaper, and you can get full juice if you know how to do it properly.

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There's even a special "confused" cord that anybody with any real generator experience knows about... would work just fine. I won't go into those details however; I tell you, you tell a friend, they tell their friends, and somewhere along the line someone without any common sense gets hurt... it comes back... blah blah blah yada yada  :-X

Anyhow, none of that applies here as I'm only running the one unit...

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The relays are subsequently fed from a control cable that was put in next to the output cable and frame bond wire coming out of the bottom...

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It will be terminated with a waterproof connector which will mate with the opposing gender on the truck's cable. This leads to a board that has the isolation and relay driving electronics on it, ultimately connecting to GPIO on the Pi.

One other thing that needed attention was the side cover. The latch had been broken at some point, and the previous owner (?) rigged up a workaround using a bolt and a flat piece of stainless to try and hold the cover in place. It worked to an extent, but even just normal engine vibration would make it come loose, and the panel would pop off.

I of course can't have this happening while going down the road, so this is what came to be...

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It's just 4 eye bolts with springs holding tension on the cover... pretty simple, and very effective. ;)

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(Continued . . .)
Wanted: Schrödinger's cat, dead and alive.

Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Honda eu2000i Generator Truck Mount
« Reply #2 on: November 02, 2015, 11:32:42 pm »
(. . . Continued)

And finally, this is where it sits as of this writing... It's the sled part of the assembly without the sliders on it yet, the generator staged on it for the pics.

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That's it for now... more coming soon...

Until then..

Steve
Wanted: Schrödinger's cat, dead and alive.