My Onan 5.0 is about to flip 500 hrs, is there any special maintenance that it will need? Is that considered alot of hours also? It runs fine, no issues what so ever with it. I have done the other periodic maintenance like oil changes, filters..etc.

I don't know if 500 hours is high, as long as maintenance is performed, as you stated. Like you, I do oil changes every 100 hours, air filter twice a year, both fuel filters once a year, and a new plug once a year. Other than that, I don't know what else you can do, but I would like to know also as I am approaching that number. Mine is a 7.0. I always thought anything over 1200-1500 was high hours. How long do these things last, LOL?

These things are designed to run for thousands of hours..... many thousands.

Operator Manual (with maintenance schedule on page 17) can be downloaded HERE

I have a few friends with 2-3 thousand hours and stilll run like new

I would sure hope it would be designed to run for more than 20 days.

500/24 = 20.8

i just hit 775 over 4th weekend. no issues. purrs like a kitten!

I've got a 1000 on mine... no issues and I expect many thousands more.

Yeap! The guys over at Quality RV said they have a customer with an Onan 5500 genny that has over 8k hours and it still runs great.

I would be more afraid of a generator with low hours on an older unit. When these things sit without use they seem to gum up and have other problems. I try to run mine atleast a couple hours a month. Oil, fuel and air filter changes every 100 hours or at the begining of the season. A well maintained generator should last many thousands of hours.

the 7500W generac in the 5er has just under 800 hrs on it if i remember correctly (havent looked at it recently). its not the original gen either, the previous owner swapped it in place of the orig 5.5W unit that was there for more elec power. the old onan emerald plus 4K in ye ol warrior had right around 3000 hrs on it when i sold the trailer after it was totalled by the drunk driver

Thx guys. Figured I ask. IDK why i thought 500 seemed like alot to me..

Here's a way to look at it....500 hours is about 12.5k thousand miles on a car. It doesn't seem bad when you look at it like that

When I sold my motorhome, the gennie (Onan 5500) had almost 900 hrs. and never had a lick of trouble. I expected it run for 900 more. Just stay on top of your maintenance.

I'm in the market right now for a used motorhome, and one of the contenders has 1700 hours on an Onan 5500 genny. It runs great though. I'm not to worried about the high hours worst case you buy another for aroun 2k. How much to rebuild one?

as Rusty stated, generators are designed to run several thousand hours. I would say at least 8-10K....

People always try to keep their genny hours down. Not me, gennys are made to run. I run mine all the time when we go to the dunes. I have 600 hours on mine and do regular maintenance. It runs good.

Here is the service manual for the Onan 5500.

From an old RV tech, me, keep the load on a genset while it's running. Running without a load is the biggest killer of ANY genset. There are some occasions that you may have to pull the head off for a carbon removal. That's not a threat until maybe 3-4000 hrs of run time. That's if all the maintenance is done regularly, good fuel is used, all filters checked/changed on time, etc., etc.

I've seen some gensets (in 1999) from 1980's model RV's that had 5-6000 hrs., and they still ran fine. Keep the load on it, keep up with mainteneance, all is well, considering it's a mechanical item that could explode at any time.