Daily Archives: July 2, 2011
I’ve got Good News and Bad News . . .
The operation was a success but the patient died.
I related yesterday about my electrical problem. Everything was still pointing to my Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS).
Power in an RV can come from 3 different places: Shore Power, the onboard diesel generator, or the battery/inverter system.
The ATS is the unit that decides where the power is coming from, and then switches to that source to power things in the coach. The generator takes precedence. Even if we’re plugged into shore power, if the generator starts, the ATS will switch to it.
Research last night said the goto guy on these units is Kevin Mallory with CruisingAmericaRV in Celina, OH. As it turns out, I know Kevin. We met at Nick Russell’s Gypsy Journal Rally in Celina two years ago.
Called him and he answered on a 4th of July weekend Saturday. Great!
He led me thru taking the unit apart and checking the 5 fuses down at the bottom of the unit.
Here’s the rats nest I was working in. The panel with all the relays is hinged on the left side and lifts up. The 5 fuses are underneath there.
But as I was threading my hand down thru the cables, I noticed that one of the two 2" x 2" transformers on the circuit was sitting sideways hanging off the edge of the board.
I picked it up and it was loose. It was a fairly heavy transformer only held on the board by the 4 small leads soldered to the board.
Bad design. Something this heavy should have been ziptied to the board.
At this point I didn’t bother checking the fuses.
Here’s the culprit.
Kevin had already told me that the only way to bypass the transfer switch to get power to the coach was to undo the shore power coming and the transfer switch output to the breaker panel and splice them together.
And that worked!
Now that we have power again, I’m probably going to rewire things using plugs and receptacles so that I can manually switch between shore power and generator when I need to just unplugging one cable and plugging in another.
So instead of having an ATS, I will have an MTS (Manual Transfer Switch).
Me!
That’s the Good News! We have power back.
The bad news is that now my Inverter has died. Since it’s part of the same unit as the ATS, I don’t know if it’s part of the same problem or what.
As I said yesterday, It’s always something.
Once again, kudos to Kevin Mallory of CruisingAmericaRV for helping me out on a Holiday Weekend.
——————————————————————————————————————-
Thought for the Day:
Better to keep your enemy in your sights than in your camp expecting him to guard your back.
gdfg
