Not sure yet. I'm exploring some leads on generators, and I'll go from there. :wink:

 

Alright, so a real APU is gonna cost you a lil more money up front, but damn.....! By the time you get this thing working properly that $7900 is probably gonna look cheap to you. Is your time and labor worth anything to you? Evidently your not very concerned with your truck or your own well being. I dont know how you ever have time to be a trucker with all the tinkering and posting you do. Maybe you ought to look into one of those racing fire suits then you will be able to sleep in comfort again!

 

Your concept of money is laughable. Even if I do put a water cooled unit in, I'll still be about $3000 cheaper than the cheapest APU.

A kazillion dollars an hour.

Me either.

 

Don't feel bad Rev, my gen lasted 3 hours once I got to the first truck stop and the genhead burned out. So now I'm back to idling and idleair. POS, it would make a good boat anchor.

 

What kinda setups do the sailboats run? Most of those guys stay offshore for weeks and have small power units and A/C setups. Seems like it would be pretty small and efficient.... would probably work well adapted to a truck. Just an idea.

 

Marine generators. They have two cooling systems, and I'm not sure that it could be fitted to a truck, because the exhaust runs through a fresh water cooling system. It was something I was exploring, because marine generators tend to be a bit cheaper than standard water cooled generators.

 

Most run a 2 cylinder Perkins like the one that's in my Rigmaster.

 

No, they don't. Marine engines are a completely different beast. Google "marine generator".

 

UPDATE:

Now that I've had some time to dig into the system, my stepdad and I figured out all the problems that caused the fire.

1. Apparently, there was no need to run the fuel pump at all. Once the electric fuel pump had primed the system, it was no longer needed. So I guess I spent $250 on a priming system. I pull started the generator today (on the first pull), and it fired right up and continued to run without the fuel pump running at all. The fire was caused by the fuel pump overloading - it was pumping fuel that it didn't need to, and was overworking itself. At this point, the fuel pump isn't even needed anymore.

2. I had the electric fan sucking air out of the box. I found that it moved air much better when I had it blowing air in.

So even though I have a running generator now, it's still coming out. I've decided that it is just too damn loud.

I'm replacing it with a 2500 watt Honda generator. Yeah, it's gonna be gas powered. Yeah, it irritates the hell out of me that I'm going to do it this way. But I hooked a Honda generator to my AC today, and could run the AC and my microwave at the same time. And given the fact that the Honda unit is so friggin quiet, it wins. I'm going to put an auxiliary gas tank on it - probably somewhere around 8-9 gallons, so I can run a full 24 hours without having to refuel. That way, I can fill up the system, get a few days use out of it, and then if I have to drop the trailer to pull up to a gas island, I will. But at the end of the day, the box I built works, the AC works, the electric cooling fan works, so I'm going to make the rest of it as simple as possible. I can get a 2500 watt Honda generator for around $800. I have someone interested in buying my diesel generator for $400, so I'll only have to fork out another $400 for the generator, and probably about $200 at most for the fuel tank.

And no more fires.

 

I seen you post the regs on having a gas gen before,is there any problems with having one on the truck? and the aux fuel tank?

I am getting ready to buy 2 Homda 2000i's to run in Parallel for my camper,I could easily take them with me in the truck.