RV Generator Bolt Field Report (Canada)
The Motorhome Was Fine. The Generator Was Dead. And One Buried Bolt Stood Between Us And The Fix.
June 2026 · 9 min read
Forty kilometres up a forestry road in the Rockies, off the grid, and the one thing that powers our home quit on us.
There is a job on every Class A motorhome that looks simple from the owner's manual and turns into a lost weekend in the bush. It is the Onan generator. Not the engine, not the slides. The generator that runs your fridge, your furnace, and your wife's morning coffee when you are parked a long way from a power pedestal. The part that fails is ordinary. The reason a man gives up is one mounting bolt buried so deep in the basement bay that you can put two fingers on it and still not swing a wrench.
I am not a mechanic and I am not selling anything. I am a retired millwright from Barrie who spent thirty four years keeping the line running at a plant north of Toronto, and my wife Linda and I have been chasing the sun in a Class A for the better part of nine years. Arizona in the winter with the rest of the snowbirds, the Rockies and the Maritimes in the summer. The motorhome is not a holiday. It is our home with the wheels still on it.
I am writing this for the next couple parked on a quiet forestry road with a dead generator and a fastener they cannot reach. Because a retired diesel man named Garth handed me the answer over a coffee at a rally, and he told me to pass it on.
The part the forums leave out
If your coach has any years on it, you already know the Onan gets cranky. It will not start, or it starts and drops out under load, and nine times out of ten it is something a handy man can sort out himself once he can get the unit out on its tray to look at it. The parts are not exotic. The work is not hard. It is just work, right up until you get to the back of it.
Here is what the factory did. They build the generator onto its slide tray on a bench, where every bolt sits out in clear air, and then they lower the whole coach body and the basement walls down around it. The bay closes in on three sides. The chassis rail runs along the back. By the time that motorhome rolls off the line, the two rear tray bolts are sitting in a pocket against the frame where no straight tool will ever reach them. That is not bad luck. That is how it was built, by somebody who never had to pull one in a campground.
The two front bolts came out fine. The two in the back, with the bay wall on one side and the frame rail on the other, you can crack that first quarter turn and then there is no arc left for anything to swing through.
Everything in the bay of that coach had a go at those bolts. Here is how each one did.
- Standard ratchet. The handle hit the bay wall before the socket ever seated. No swing at all.
- Stubby ratchet. Maybe a few degrees of arc. On a bolt buried that deep, that is most of an afternoon for one fastener.
- Flex-head ratchet. Reached in, then folded at the joint the moment I leaned on it, and the socket walked off the bolt. Knuckles into the frame rail.
- Universal joint on an extension. Twisted sideways and skipped under load, every single time.
- The mobile tech. The fellow who would come to us was a hundred and eighty an hour plus a travel charge for the run up the forestry road, and he was booked the better part of three weeks deep, because it is July and every coach in the province picks the same month to act up.
What the access actually costs
Put the real numbers on the table. A mobile RV tech in this country runs a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars an hour before he has touched a thing, and the ones who will drive out to a boondocking site add a travel charge on top. The generator parts are pocket change against that. And in the summer, when you finally have the coach where you wanted it, the soonest anyone can come is two or three weeks out. A dead genset is not a small thing when it is forty kilometres to the nearest pedestal and the fridge is getting warm.
I sat on the step of that coach with raw knuckles, looking at a bolt I could touch and could not turn, doing the math on a part that cost less than a tank of diesel. Linda came out with a cup of coffee made on the propane and did not say a word. After forty one years she knows the difference between a man who wants company and a man who needs a minute.
You can get two fingers on it. You cannot get a wrench square on it. That pocket behind the genset is the whole story.
Then a retired diesel man put a bar in my hand
Garth is seventy two. He turned wrenches on highway tractors for thirty five years before he retired to a fifth-wheel and a half-ton, and he has pulled more gensets than most techs ever will. I met him at the rally our RV club holds every spring before everyone scatters for the season. I go because half those folks have already made every mistake I am about to make. I told him about the back two bolts, the folded flex-head, the quote with the travel charge on it. He did not laugh. He went to his truck and came back with a flat steel bar, about fifteen inches long, with a chrome square drive at each end.
He had me press my thumb into one of the drives and turned the other end. Something moved, very slightly, under my thumb. A roller chain, sealed inside the length of the bar. "The chain takes the bend so your hand does not have to," he said. "Socket goes on the buried end, behind the genset. Your ratchet goes on the other end, out in the open where you have all the room in the world. The bar lies flat over the obstruction and stays still. Every click you make out where you can see it, the chain carries back to the bolt. It cannot fold, there is no hinge in it. It cannot walk off, the drive never lifts."
"The chain takes the bend for you."
A slim, dead straight bar, about half an inch thick, that slides flat into the pocket between the bay wall and the frame rail where nothing else fits. The sealed roller chain inside carries your pull around the offset and lands it square on the fastener. It is called the Savary offset wrench, and it is the bar Garth had been telling every man at that rally about for a year.
One thing to be clear about. This is not a wiring tool, a generator diagnosis, or a shortcut around proper service. Shut the genset down and isolate it before you work. This is for reaching the mounting bolts after the bay is open. Nothing more.
The sealed chain is the trick
A roller chain inside the steel body carries torque around the bend, so it never folds like a flex-head or walks like a universal joint.
Slides into the bay
A slim half-inch-thick bar slips flat between the basement wall, the frame rail and the genset tray where no ratchet can swing.
Takes your own sockets
Square drive at both ends fits the sockets already in your bay. Holds real torque, up to seventy newton metres, a hair past fifty foot pounds.
It reaches. It is honest.
This solves access to a fastener you cannot get a tool on. Your breaker bar still cracks the rusty ones loose, your torque wrench still sets final spec. This does the part in between, in zero swing room.
It only comes from one place
You will not find it at the dealer, or at Canadian Tire, or on any parts counter. The maker sells direct from their own site only, shipped tracked to your door in Canada with no surprise at the border. A hundred and twenty eight dollars. That is less than an hour of a mobile tech's time, and a rounding error against a season of boondocking, for the one tool that keeps your home running where the help cannot reach you.
What happened next
Other RVers who stopped paying for access
"Onan quit on us outside Jasper. The closest mobile guy was two weeks and a long drive away. Had the tray bolts out with this bar that afternoon and we never left the site. Paid for itself before we got home."
"We winter in Yuma. Last year a shop down there wanted four hundred just to reach a bolt behind the genset I could touch. This year I reached it myself in five minutes from the same chair I drink my coffee in."
"Bought a cheap copy off Amazon first. It folded on the first real pull, exactly as warned. The real one from the maker does not give at all. Night and day."
Garth carried his to the spring rally for a year, handing it to one stuck full-timer after another. Now he just tells them where to get their own.
Get yours before the season gets away on you
If you are living out of a coach a long way from the nearest dealer, you already know exactly which bolt this is for. And if you have been telling yourself you are getting too old to work in that bay, it was never your hands. It was the shape of the tools.
The Full-Timer's Field Notes is a reader-supported publication. This is a first-person account from a private owner and reflects his personal experience. The Savary offset extension wrench is a hand tool designed to reach fasteners in tight, blind locations. It improves access; it is not represented as a remedy for fasteners that are corroded or seized beyond normal service, and it is not a substitute for a breaker bar or a torque wrench. It does not diagnose or repair generators, electrical, or fuel systems. Always shut down and isolate equipment and follow proper service procedures before working. Results vary by coach and condition. Prices in Canadian dollars. This publication is not affiliated with Onan, Cummins, or any motorhome manufacturer.
