Check And Replace A Failed RV Converter

[Music] hi folks this is darren with my RV works we're where we port love lo washington when you got that hook canal bridge at world's second longest floating bridge that's where all the big submarines go through really exciting i haven't seen one yet but we're we're right there the bridge is just yonder anyway I have a RV where every time you turn the breaker on the breaker trips right away telling me it's a dead short so let me show you that believe it's gonna be the converter so we're gonna look at that converter and show you how to swap out our converter pretty straightforward process left I figured let's take you up to the journey so here we go alright so here's a breaker box this one this breakers tripped you can see that it's spring loaded okay so when you have your breaker and it's spring loaded like that you need to reset it so we're gonna go off and watch what happens when I turn it on okay it just it just tripped right off again now that one says it's a converter so let's go turn this one off and let's go look at the converter here's a converter converters job is to take 120 AC convert it to 12 volts DC and that's what's gonna run all your DC circuits inside this panel is gonna be all your fuses so this has two jobs one convert 120 to 12 AC to DC that's one job the second job is he's also your battery charger there's another part of this that will charge your batteries so if your converters not working you're not gonna have 12 volts DC and if it's not working you're not going to have your batteries you're not gonna be charging if you find this to be your problem which I believe is the problem will troubleshoot this in a second then what you can do is just get a regular battery charger or in a worst case jumper cables from your tow vehicle or just somehow put power DC power on your batteries directly whether it's a battery charge of jumper cables from your car just get 12 volts for those batteries and that'll basically charge the battery back feet yes so here I've unplugged the converter now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go turn that breaker back on and if the breaker trips with this unplug and it's not this and we're gonna be looking for something in the wiring if the breaker stays on then more than likely it's this and I'm saying this because the sticker said converter so we're going to assume that the manufacturer of the RV just put the stickers on correctly okay so let's go try that breaker in the front so here we are back here with a converter we left it off now I'm gonna see if it'll turn on and stay on last time I did this it tripped off let's see okay it stayed on so it's on and it feels healthy it's not tripping it's the same one so I'm gonna leave this one on let's go around to the converter again okay so here we have the receptacle that I'm plugging that I'm plugging into and it even says converted receptacle on it right here so when I plug this in I want to see if it's gonna trip that breaker so we're gonna listen for the click about three feet away from us here we go okay we saw an arc right here and the breaker tripped so that tells me there's something wrong with this appliance right I've got this unplugged and I'm gonna take this gonna murder off I don't know what's wrong with it but we do see the arcing on the plinth on the plugs and it's stripping our breaker so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna there's wires one of this thing right AC going in DC coming out so let's be safe I've turned I've disconnected my battery the battery over here has a disconnect turned that off and so to show that let's take a look here I'm gonna I'm gonna put my meter on DC I expect this to be zero if I can grab this guy there we are so okay so my meter is showing 0 volts DC so our battery is disconnected we're not feeding back anything here the reason that's good if this this coach has a battery disconnect switch but if you don't then you would disconnect the leads to your battery you don't wanna be working on this when your wires are still connected the battery will do work Darren why would that be well because if this wire touches something you can have a big arc and there's hardly any fuse between here there so it could be bad so I know that these are dead I'm gonna still treat them as if they're live so I've looked in here and it's got a square bit so this is a square bit and that's a mental case grounded so be careful so I'm gonna go in here very gently take that guy off and I've got a big wire nut I always want to treat this as if this is a direct connection to the battery okay and okay so he came out now that I've got the live guy off okay this panel down here could also be going to the battery so I always want to treat him as if he's hot and now this is the neutral so I say neutral this one is the the wire that goes to the battery that's bonded you're supposed to disconnect the negative first but in this instance I wanted to get this guy out of here treat him as if he's hot I don't want them even though this wire goes to the frame let's just do that no and you also got a ground wire here ground being the most important current carrying conductor why because if things go sideways it's a ground that's going to save the day all right here is our bad converter put them over there now I stock these why do you stock these dieren the converters seem to take big hits all the time so I always have at least 2 to 3 in my service trailer at all times and its parts that seems to this and water pumps you know these are the things that you stop so it's the same kind of this one he doesn't have square his or slotted so put him right here kind of wish they were all this easy you know part it's a swap out no what I want to do before I get too carried away is before I connect all these things I want to plug this in okay now my breakers tripped but I want to plug this in to make sure that there's nothing wrong with the wiring I'm pretty convinced that that converter there a shot let's do one more test on this converter here this bad one so I'm gonna stick him right here he's acting like he's got a dead short the fuses are fine so if he's got it that short let's do a comparison here I'm gonna put my meter on continuity mode which is the Omega and you'll just hear it beep so basically when I touch these two leads together you hear the beep so this is the bad converter let's see if he beeps no he's not beeping but I've got 17,000 ohms of resistance okay now let's take the new converter compare I got open okay so he's open okay well so this the new one is open and the bad one has resistance 18,000 ohms of resistance so there's something going on inside of this guy that's causing him to just short out so we'll get him out of the way so let me go I'm gonna plug this in reset the breaker see if he stays on and then I will be able to unplug him from here and I could leave the breaker on and then we'll go ahead and connect these wires okay so let's do that and I'll be right back I want to put my ground on because like I said if something goes sideways it's the ground that's gonna save the day and so before I do anything let's get that ground in there and I believe it's like 35 inch pounds of torque okay so now that the ground is on what I want to do is plug this in okay and just see if my breaker trips again and then we'll know is it the converter because the other one was melted so I was pretty convinced if that was the issue let's plug this guy back in here the breaker trip so if this guy's happy my meter I'm on DC okay so if he's happy I don't know if you can see that but I'll tell you what I find minus and plus okay he's putting out 13 point 6 volts 13 6 volts is what the converter is putting out and we look over here on the nameplate and the nameplate output is 13 4 so we're within we're in range okay so now I'm going to unplug him and now these are said we're slotted this is just a little heat shrink I put on worthless visits [Music] okay good let's plug it in I heard a beep inside telling us that maybe a propane alarm or refrigerator something's on so let's go to AC mode or current mode DC whenever you use DC you need to zero out your meter so you put your meter on the wire and you zero it okay so now when you put it on here I've got point seven five I've got three quarters of an amp going through that wire okay so that's good number batteries are off so when I I'll leave this on well my battery's turn on I expect that to go much much higher right now three quarters of an amp are going feeding this and feeding the coach you know your water heater your furnace refrigerator they'll have little brains on them your LP detector those are all little brains they all have 12 volt brains and so that's probably what this 0.75 is so let me go reach over here I could reach it from here so and yeah we have 55 55 47 amps so now that tells me the bad there's there's current going through here so the 0.75 was the regular current going to the coach of the lights for honoring like that but the now we're down to 38 amps DC and we're charging battery so we'll go over the battery to verify we have 13 6 over there and then I think we're we've got a successful operation here so let's go check out the batteries because that's what this is all about and we'll go inside and turn on some light to make sure everything's working and we know our batter or a regular is fixed so let's see what we can do with the batteries now okay so I've got you perched kind of for curiously up there but so I'm gonna put the meter on 12 volts DC and now that converter was putting out 13 6 so we'll use this we'll use this is my negative now I go over here because that's when that goes with a coach and this one comes into the coach so the meter says thirteen one I'm acceptable of that it was putting up thirteen six with no load on it now that we're charging the battery we're putting up thirteen one 13 - that's acceptable it's greater than 12 volts batteries by themselves let me turn this off there you go batteries by themselves or are twelve seven twelve eight so if I'm putting I'm getting a reading of thirteen then it's greater than the battery's voltage therefore the converter is in fact charging the batteries so hopefully through this video you've seen how to maybe diagnose troubleshoot and replace your converter in your RV we verify that the batteries are charging and I think we're gonna have another happy camper so if this was at a value to you give me a thumb up that's how you can thank us for these videos and if you like these kinds of things you can subscribe to our Channel I've got lots of repair videos we've already got and we've got a whole summer worth of more video so we're making probably doing another a little later today but that'll be coming out later as well so got a lot of videos planned in the pipeline so if you're liking these thumbs up subscribe and happy camper say my hair do work so this is Darren from port let alone signing off until the next video [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: My RV Works, Inc.

Views: 303,023

Keywords: My RV Works, RV Tech Washington, RV Repair Washington, RV Power Converter, RV 12 Volt Problem, RV Converter Problem

Id: QGijbhE2Zm0

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 30 2019