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Okay, earlier suggestion to check the contacts inside the converter housing didn't work. They're fine and clean. Problem My 88' Southwind with Chevy chassis, has a converter and charger in one under the fridge. It has a "Charging Sentinel" LED bulb that should be on if charging or if the batteries are topped off. If there is no light, the unit says check owners manual. The light is totally off and I don't have the manual. Looking at the circuit board on the 12V side as well as all wires and connections reveals nothing. Same on the 110 side of the box. Breakers and fuses all good. I have dead batteries and the charger won't charge. Anybody else go through this?? I've already put two hours into hunting the problem, and am now looking under the hood at the isolater relay and the central electrical panel mounted on the firewall. The Aux battery disconnect works if I'm hooked up to shore power, but not if just on the dead batteries. The Main battery disconnect switch produces no sound or change no matter what I do. Possibly an important clue I believe this problem began and has slowly gotten worse, after I forgot to kill the juice from the generator while tuning the generator using high RPM's. Blew out a VCR on that one. Please, any clues where to look next would be greatly appreciated. Camping World is 75$ an hour for labor to hunt stuff down. Similar set ups can be found on the Pace Arrow and Bounder models from the same year. Thanks.
Okay, earlier suggestion to check the contacts inside the converter housing didn't work. They're fine and clean. Problem My 88' Southwind with Chevy chassis, has a converter and charger in one under the fridge. It has a "Charging Sentinel" LED bulb that should be on if charging or if the batteries are topped off. If there is no light, the unit says check owners manual. The light is totally off and I don't have the manual. Looking at the circuit board on the 12V side as well as all wires and connections reveals nothing. Same on the 110 side of the box. Breakers and fuses all good. I have dead batteries and the charger won't charge. Anybody else go through this?? I've already put two hours into hunting the problem, and am now looking under the hood at the isolater relay and the central electrical panel mounted on the firewall. The Aux battery disconnect works if I'm hooked up to shore power, but not if just on the dead batteries. The Main battery disconnect switch produces no sound or change no matter what I do. Possibly an important clue I believe this problem began and has slowly gotten worse, after I forgot to kill the juice from the generator while tuning the generator using high RPM's. Blew out a VCR on that one. Please, any clues where to look next would be greatly appreciated. Camping World is 75$ an hour for labor to hunt stuff down. Similar set ups can be found on the Pace Arrow and Bounder models from the same year. Thanks.
I'll make an educated guess because I saw a so called "tech" blow an inhouse phone system by over-revving the standby generator while it was online. What was damaged in your converter was frequency sensitive. Generators will run at two governed speeds,1800 or 3600 RPM, depending on how they are wound. These speeds produce 60 cycle,( 60 cycles per second, X 60 seconds= 3,600 in the one case, 1800 X 2= 3,600 RPM in the other case of the double-wound design). Is the converter section of the unit still functional? That is, if you hook to shore power do the 12 volt appliances, (water pump, lights, frig control, etc), work? If so, I'd forget the converter's charging section, ( which most likely is kaput), and wire in a 1.25 amp full wave,(which equals around a 3 amp half wave charger), "float" type charger/maintainer. By shopping around I found the best one for $45. The "float" type are the ones that don't boil your batteries dry if left on for extended periods of time.If you want, email me and I'll give you some simple tests to run to check out your system.
Okay, earlier suggestion to check the contacts inside the converter housing didn't work.
Save your time and get a new convertor/charger. These are a almost slide out, slide in deal and are about 150 $ usd. You don't have to remove the whole panel, just the bottom section. Course, you have to wire it back up just like you take it out.
Okay, will email you. Yup, didn't want to hear that, but you ask, and your bound to get some bad news after doing what I did. BTW the solenoid on the bottom right of the firewall electrical control panel, had a 5 amp blade fuse ON the solenoid cap that was blown. Never seen one there before, but I replaced it. Also, there is a light blue wire which runs from the small solenoid post, over the radiator, and to a frame mounted isolater relay box. Looking at the circuit board for this plastic box unit, there are bubbles in the circuit paths, which seems to indicate that it got real hot there. Haven't looked at resistors and what not on the busy side of the board yet, but there are probably components fried there if the board got that hot. What does this small unit (isolater relay) do exactly? I'm not afraid of soldering components onto a circuit board if I happen to find a toasted one, and if I knew what component I fried in the converter (if that's it) I'd try to replace the component to keep the unit original. However, I pulled all the screws in the cabinet to the converter unit, got the front cover off to see the the 12V and 110 contact switches, but the whole darn unit will not slide out of the woodwork, so I can't see what is in the back section. In answer to your question, yes, lights and applianances work on shore power, although heater doesn't want to fire/runs slow and TV has reduced screen size indicating insufficient amps to the system. Likewise, all systems work when the 454 Chev engine is running, but the coach batteries don't charge from that either. Just a question, could a short in the coach batteries cause similar symptoms? I obviously want to eliminate the easy stuff first before I give up on the converter/charger completely. I appreciate your help and patience. If anyone one else has ideas, I'd love to hear them, as I print them out and chase stuff down as time permits. Besides, you always learn stuff that might come in handy later, even if it doesn't apply to the immediate problem. Thanks again.
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