200MK Wire Routing and Entry

[epearce]

Eric, do you remember this conversation? First of all, your guidence and speculation saved me a world of hurt today. For that I am very grateful. The short story is that we moved sites 4 days ago and it was a five hour drive. Sometime during that drive, the circuit breaker feeding the converter was tripped.For four days I did not realize that I was using batteries for all 12V devices despite being connected to shore power. Because the converter was disconnected, it neither charged the batteries nor converted power. Today, the batteries became fully drained. I no longer had any 12v devices. I checked the circuit breaker in the power distribution panel and it was tripped. I don't know if it was because of rough roads or as you suggested, maybe the auto-reset 30amp circuit breaker was cycling too much. I reset the circuit breaker and the converter started cycling on and off. My first assumption was the converter had failed. But then I remembered this conversation. Thankfully,following your advice I had purchased the 60amp manual reset and threw it into my project box for a later install.

Rather than continuing with the assumption the converter failed, I decided to do the cheaper option and replace the 30amp with the 60amp. Nothing is ever as easy as it could be. The ring connectors used for the 30amp were too small for the 60amp. The space used for the 30amp on the inside of the trailer frame was tight. I was able to drill two new holes and mount the 60amp in the same place. This was lucky since 4 of the 6 wires would have been too short if the breaker needed to be relocated. 4 hours later, a trip to the auto parts store, and with some luck the rain held off, the new manual reset circuit breaker is installed.

At the end of the day, the converter has been running flawlessly. It spent the first hour drawing 52amps which answers a question previously raised. If the batteries are kept fully charged, the Opti 30amp auto-reset would probably have continued to be adequate. But as soon as the batteries fell below trickle charge range, the 30amp CB could not handle the load. I am convinced that you saved the day. I still don't understand why the circuit breaker in the PDP tripped but that can wait for another day.

Thanks again Eric. (I love this forum)

Thanks for the comments... I'm glad it worked out. I'm still wondering why GD did a few things on the wiring. I have a post on the GD OEM wiring rattling around somewhere in Reference I think.