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EMTPRescue · 06-02-2020, 04:45 PM

We have a 41' Montana and we dry camp/ boondock in NW Montana in the heat of the summer. Your question about lights is a no brainer. The lights in your trailer, unless it was built in the 60s are all 12 volt and run off of your trailer's battery. TV unless again you have a special one is powered off of 120V AC. Two ways to consider the TV subject. First how much will you be watching it? If would only be for an hour or so until you get to the next CG with hookups then I would consider a 12VDC - 120VAC pure sign wave inverter. A lot less money than any Gen set and no gas to haul around and fill. You could run just the TV off of the inverter that could be permanently installed behind the TV. You could leave it plugged into the inverter full time. Just know that even if your TV is turned off that it still draws power to keep most of the circuitry live so that it powers up more quickly. We have a 4500Watt Yamaha gen set. We have had both the Yamaha and Honda 3500 models in the past. Though from a specs standppint a 3500watt would power our trailer and more specifically would run "one" of our AC units, the 15K BTU AC units pull a bucket load of power on startup and each time you ask your gen set to do that you are putting further down the road to failure. We did that and burnt out the control board in our last Yamaha 3500 unit to the tune of $1100.00 to replace the board. We have owned many different brands over the years. Honda and Yamaha are the only way to go. "ALL" the others cut corners in the manufacturing in both the engines and the electronics. Both Big Blue and Red steel sleeve their engines. That means that the rings on the piston are traveling up an down on a surface that is designed to last. Most others just do some metallurgical smoke and mirrors to harden the aluminum bore similar to a non-stick frying pan process. Most if not all of the other brands have a duty cycle life of about 350 hours. Before we let the smoke out the control board on our last Yamaha we had it for 7 years and used it about 75 - 100 hours per year. The Chinese frying pan models would have given up the ghost long before that. There is a reason why Honda and Yamaha with combined sales own the small engine market in the world. Quite simply they work and keep working.

06-02-2020, 04:45 PM	#25
EMTPRescue Member Join Date: Apr 2020 Location: Calgary Posts: 44	We have a 41' Montana and we dry camp/ boondock in NW Montana in the heat of the summer. Your question about lights is a no brainer. The lights in your trailer, unless it was built in the 60s are all 12 volt and run off of your trailer's battery. TV unless again you have a special one is powered off of 120V AC. Two ways to consider the TV subject. First how much will you be watching it? If would only be for an hour or so until you get to the next CG with hookups then I would consider a 12VDC - 120VAC pure sign wave inverter. A lot less money than any Gen set and no gas to haul around and fill. You could run just the TV off of the inverter that could be permanently installed behind the TV. You could leave it plugged into the inverter full time. Just know that even if your TV is turned off that it still draws power to keep most of the circuitry live so that it powers up more quickly. We have a 4500Watt Yamaha gen set. We have had both the Yamaha and Honda 3500 models in the past. Though from a specs standppint a 3500watt would power our trailer and more specifically would run "one" of our AC units, the 15K BTU AC units pull a bucket load of power on startup and each time you ask your gen set to do that you are putting further down the road to failure. We did that and burnt out the control board in our last Yamaha 3500 unit to the tune of $1100.00 to replace the board. We have owned many different brands over the years. Honda and Yamaha are the only way to go. "ALL" the others cut corners in the manufacturing in both the engines and the electronics. Both Big Blue and Red steel sleeve their engines. That means that the rings on the piston are traveling up an down on a surface that is designed to last. Most others just do some metallurgical smoke and mirrors to harden the aluminum bore similar to a non-stick frying pan process. Most if not all of the other brands have a duty cycle life of about 350 hours. Before we let the smoke out the control board on our last Yamaha we had it for 7 years and used it about 75 - 100 hours per year. The Chinese frying pan models would have given up the ghost long before that. There is a reason why Honda and Yamaha with combined sales own the small engine market in the world. Quite simply they work and keep working.