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
>