Thank you all for all for the input. I spent a chunk of time yesterday online trying to learn some more about all this. I also looked around at quality generators, online, and found a good source for that Honda 2000ie at about $849 shipping included. Appx the same cost for an equivalent Yamaha brand. I should just bite the bullet and get one of those. But since I am only an occaisional user of a generator and I already have one that 'sort of works'...I just hate the concept of buying another and I can see my S.O. saying..."Hey, the new generator is quiet, let's watch a movie tonight, and turn on the heater, and and and..." All of a sudden, I will find myself maintaining a bunch of additional electrical widgets that we happily do without now....And when we go on Vanagon trips, I can see being asked to 'bring the generator, we can run a heater and and and...." So my plan is to *try again* on a different battery charger with that coleman genset...see if I can find a charger that is NOT solid state, one that will work with my "Flintstones" generator so I can make it through this trip by charging my coach batteries with a secondary accessory charger when the sun is gone for 2 days and my batteries go flat without the solar panel working. When I get back to the Northwest I'll get more serious about finding a good used Honda or maybe decide to just buy a new one and E-bay away the Coleman Powermate.. Don Hanson

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 6:27 AM, Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@cox.net> wrote:

> David, I thought the complaint was not that the output was NOT a sine wave, > but that the "precision" of the wave was somehow not that great. That might > be that the amplitude varies, and in a non-predictable way? Not > knowledgeable enough about generator function to be sure, but that's what it > sounded like to me. That might account for the ability of the thing to > drive a tool motor, but not to support electronics (which the battery > charger, if it is recent, almost certainly contains). Make sense? > > David > > ---- David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET> wrote: > > At 06:24 PM 2/8/2010, Loren Busch wrote: > > >I think you have already received the right answer: The modified sine > wave > > >coming out of the generator is not liked by your charger. > > >A brief look what I could find seems to indicate that (if you have the > > >generator I think you do) it has a special connection for charging > > >batteries. If so, did you try that connection? > > > > Why should the output of a rotating generator be anything but a sine > > wave? Does the generator have a low-voltage output which feeds an > > inverter for 110v? > > > > Yours, > > David >