RV Generator Repair in Sebring, Florida

The RV generator is the component most damaged by the way rigs are used in Highlands County: run in season, then left to sit through six humid months with fuel in it, and then asked to carry the whole rig on the one night in September the power goes out. Nearly every generator call we take between November and January comes down to fuel system contamination rather than anything mechanically wrong, and nearly every generator call we take in hurricane season is the same problem discovered at the worst time. We service and repair Onan and portable units at your site across Sebring and the county: typical work runs $250 to $900, trip fee $75 to $150, diagnosis first.

What we handle on site

• Will not start: fuel, spark, compression, starter, and control diagnosis in that order.
• Starts and dies: usually fuel delivery, a blocked jet, or a fuel pump that has lost prime.
• Surging or hunting under load: carburetor, governor, or a partially blocked fuel path.
• No AC output with the engine running: brushes, capacitor, voltage regulator, or breaker. After a nearby lightning strike, the regulator and control board move to the top of that list.
• Runs rough, smokes, or will not take load: plugs, filters, air path, valve adjustment.
• Routine service: oil and filter, air filter, plugs, fuel filter, and a load test.
• Exhaust and mounting concerns, which matter more than anything else on this list for safety reasons.

Everything is done where the rig sits: resort site, fish camp, storage lot, or driveway. The Onan generator page covers the failure patterns on the units in most motorhomes.

Why a Florida summer destroys generators

Modern pump gasoline with ethanol is not a storage fluid, and it is worse in a humid climate than a dry one. Two things happen in a carburetor bowl between May and November here:

Varnish. The light fractions evaporate out of the fuel, and what is left sets like glue in the jets and passages. On a storage lot in July, with the rig closed up and the generator compartment running well above the 91°F outside air, it does not take six months. It takes a few.

Water. Ethanol draws moisture out of the air, and Sebring’s air in July averages 79 percent relative humidity. The fuel absorbs water until it separates, the water sinks to the bottom of the bowl, and it corrodes the aluminum from the inside. A carburetor that has phase-separated fuel in it will often need replacing rather than cleaning, which is the difference between the bottom and the top of our price range.

The three things that prevent it, in order of effectiveness:

1. Run it monthly under load, about two hours. Nothing else comes close. A generator that runs regularly keeps fresh fuel in the bowl and keeps everything lubricated.
2. Treat the fuel with a stabilizer if the rig genuinely has to sit, and run it long enough afterward to get treated fuel through the carburetor.
3. Shut the fuel off and run the bowl dry before long storage on units that allow it.

An owner who does the first one essentially never calls us about a generator that will not start.

Hurricane season is the reason to fix it in May

Highlands County is inland, and it still loses power. Hurricane Irma in September 2017 left 90 percent of the county without electricity and made it the second-hardest-hit county in the state. Hurricane Ian in September 2022 brought gusts near 70 mph and a near-total outage for at least 24 hours, with much of the county waiting days. For a full-timer on a resort site or a family riding out a storm in a fifth wheel in the driveway, the generator is the air conditioning, the refrigerator, and the CPAP machine.

The generator that fails on that night is the one that sat since March. It cranks, it will not catch, and no one is coming out in the storm. A service and a load test in May, before the season, is the entire fix, and it is the one generator call we would rather do than the emergency one. If you are pairing the generator with a rooftop AC for outage duty, a soft-start device on the AC is worth fitting at the same visit; starting a compressor is what trips a marginal generator.

What it costs

The same approach as every other job on our pricing page: diagnosis first, then a written number you approve before any work starts. The repair cost calculator gives you a range before you call.

Heat, humidity, load, and honest expectations

Generators are rated in moderate conditions, and they lose output as ambient temperature and humidity rise. On a 91°F August afternoon a unit is not going to make its nameplate rating, and if your generator has always struggled to carry two rooftop air conditioners in summer, that may be arithmetic rather than a fault. We will tell you so rather than selling a rebuild.

Related: starting two ACs simultaneously is what trips generators. Staggering them, or fitting soft-start devices on the air conditioners, solves a great many “my generator cannot handle my rig” complaints for less than any generator repair.

The safety part

Two things we will always raise, whether or not you asked:

Exhaust. A generator exhaust leak or a corroded tailpipe on a motorhome is a carbon monoxide risk, and RV generator exhaust systems rust fast in this humidity. If we see one, we will tell you, and we will recommend not running it until it is dealt with. During an outage, with the rig closed up and neighbors’ generators running a few feet away on a resort site, this is the single most dangerous week of the year for CO.

CO alarms. Check that yours works and is within its service life. They expire. This is free advice and it is the most important sentence on this page.

Where we work

On site across Sebring, Avon Park, Lake Placid, Lorida, Frostproof, Wauchula, and Okeechobee. Tell us the make and model, what it does when you press start, when it last ran, and where the rig sits, and we will bring the likely parts on the first trip. If a storm is in the forecast, say so; pre-storm generator checks get priority in the days before landfall.