Generator Exhaust Pipe

When anyone hires a company to build them a living enclosure, whether it's a house, an RV or a boat, they expect that the company would have the customer's health and safety foremost in their minds. But for some, it appears that concern for their customer's well being just plain doesn't exist.

This appalling lack of concern was clearly the policy of our truck builder. After all, they installed an Onan 8000 watt diesel generator on our truck, underneath the living quarters, and apparently felt it unnecessary to install the legally mandatory exhaust pipe that must protrude a minimum of one inch past the outside wall of the cabin. The result of this "policy" is that whenever the generator is turned on, all the carbon monoxide pumping out of the generator's engine will collect underneath the body, providing the opportunity for it to find its way inside the living quarters.

When we picked up the truck, we challenged the builder about the missing exhaust pipe. Their response was to say that they never put them on because the pipe hangs down and reduces ground clearance. Really? Ground clearance is more important than the customer dying from carbon monoxide poisoning? Well that's a new one for us. Seeing as we wanted to live past our next birthday, we asked for the exhaust pipe components so we could at least install it ourself. We should have insisted they install it, but by the time we got to this point we just wanted to get on our way home, and as far away as we could from these morons. We were worried that their stupidity might be contagious.

After getting back home, we wanted to get the exhaust pipe installed right away. We got out the box of components we were given and discovered something odd. There seemed to be two of everything in the box, including the pipe itself. After looking at the information on the outside of the box, and then comparing it with the info on the Onan website, we concluded that what we had been given was not the exhaust pipe for our 8000 watt generator, but two exhaust pipe setups for the 4000 watt generators they usually install on their smaller builds. Somewhere out there, there are two trucks built by this company, both without the safety of an exhaust pipe.

We emailed the builder to inform them that they had given us the wrong parts. We waited for the reply… we emailed them again… then we tried a third time. Two years later we're still waiting for their reply. Apparently the lives of their customers are of little consequence, and they prefer not to acknowledge a practice of ongoing gross negligence. So it was left up to us to solve the problem.

We called up the local Onan parts and repair facility, which is actually the Cummins dealer, to see if we can get the parts we need from them. After some searching, they came back to say the only parts they have listed are the attachment flanges and clamps. There is no exhaust pipe. So off to Midas Muffler we go, to get a pipe bent up for our purposes. Once welded to the flange, we were able to bolt it onto the generator and consider the job done. Despite the pipe hanging down, we still retained about twenty-two inches of ground clearance on the passenger side of the truck.