michaeldterry
07-05-2012, 09:53 AM
Yesterday, we had the bus out to serve as a family tailgating headquarters for the local holiday fireworks show. Suddenly, we noticed that the Cruisairs had shut down and upon investigation, I saw that the generator had shut down. I tried to restart the genset and it would start but immediately shut down every time. So I stepped outside to investigate at the genset bay and immediately noticed a very large puddle of what appeared to be coolant under the bus.
Upon close inspection, we discovered that a "nipple" like stopper had popped off the side of the generator's radiator and allowed it to puke it's coolant. We refitted the nipple and tightened the clamp that holds it on and then refilled the radiator with coolant (luckily I had a spare supply on board). We then restarted the generator and it stayed running! Success? Not quite....
Within several minutes one leg of the house went dead and gave no voltage/amps display on the distribution panel, The other side/leg continued to supply power and display its voltage and amp draw on the panel. The leg that went dead supplied power to the refrigerator, two of the three CruisAirs, and no telling what else. I checked the inverter and generator settings at the panel menu and we did a detailed visual inspection around the bus, inside and out, for any switches or breakers that might have tripped - but no luck. We never could get the second leg repowered and then called it a day when the panel menu display for the bad leg went blank so we couldn't even continue diagnosis.
We pulled up stakes, took the bus back to the lot and plugged back in to 50 amp shore power. With that, we got power back on both legs, but the one side inverter/generator menu is still blank, so I can't check/adjust the settings.
Any ideas on what our problem is and how to solve it? Could this have anything at all to do with the house batteries being bad or at end of life?
We would appreciate any wisdom/direction you can offer as we have a couple of trips coming up soon and obviously can't use the bus like this! The inverters (2) are Xantrex SW4024's.
Upon close inspection, we discovered that a "nipple" like stopper had popped off the side of the generator's radiator and allowed it to puke it's coolant. We refitted the nipple and tightened the clamp that holds it on and then refilled the radiator with coolant (luckily I had a spare supply on board). We then restarted the generator and it stayed running! Success? Not quite....
Within several minutes one leg of the house went dead and gave no voltage/amps display on the distribution panel, The other side/leg continued to supply power and display its voltage and amp draw on the panel. The leg that went dead supplied power to the refrigerator, two of the three CruisAirs, and no telling what else. I checked the inverter and generator settings at the panel menu and we did a detailed visual inspection around the bus, inside and out, for any switches or breakers that might have tripped - but no luck. We never could get the second leg repowered and then called it a day when the panel menu display for the bad leg went blank so we couldn't even continue diagnosis.
We pulled up stakes, took the bus back to the lot and plugged back in to 50 amp shore power. With that, we got power back on both legs, but the one side inverter/generator menu is still blank, so I can't check/adjust the settings.
Any ideas on what our problem is and how to solve it? Could this have anything at all to do with the house batteries being bad or at end of life?
We would appreciate any wisdom/direction you can offer as we have a couple of trips coming up soon and obviously can't use the bus like this! The inverters (2) are Xantrex SW4024's.