HELP! Genset and/or Inverter problem!

[michaeldterry]

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.

[JIM KELLER]

IMO, There has to be a breaker tripped somewhere. The fact that the generator shut down while under a load is the issue. The slowing down of the generator as it was shutting down allowed the voltage to drop which caused the amperage to spike. Sometimes breakers are in the configuration of a button and harder to find.

Good Luck

[Seabyrd]

Michael... Your inverter has a reset button on the inverter itself... (also there is a reset on the inside screen.. but I bet it's the outside one) I bet that's your problem... just hold it down and you should see the screen come on.
Good luck..
Diane

[garyde]

Hi Michael. you will have a two pole circuit breaker on the generator itself. Check voltage there first before and after the breaker.
The automatic transfer switch is second if your power is good at the generator. Check voltage there after turning on the generator to verify power is going thru the transfer switch. The loads which are off may not run thru the inverters or only some of them do so I don't think its your inverters.

[Seabyrd]

Everything on a Vantare goes through your inverters when this happened to us the reset on the inverter itself fixed the problem. Can't hurt to try... you will have to change some of the settings on the inverter also since it lost total power. Do you have the settings... they are in the manual... you will have to rest your incoming shore cord amps.. I set mine to 45 or 47 to keep it from tripping outside and you have to set the generator incoming power too. I think mine was reset to 60amps may have been 50 but it defaulted to 30 amps. The correct settings are in your manual.
Diane

[JIM KELLER]

Michael, What was the outcome on this problem? I am always wanting to learn.

[michaeldterry]

Michael, What was the outcome on this problem? I am always wanting to learn.

As it turns out, the existing house batteries were (apparently) old lead acid type. We had never paid attention to the house batteries because we don't dry camp - the bus is ALWAYS powered by 50 amp shore power or the generator. At any rate, when we had the problem diagnosed by Atlanta Custom Coach, we were told that we needed to replace the house batteries. So, I bought a new set of 8 Lifeline AGM's from Tom Chilcote (Truk4u) @ Trans-Specialists and had them installed (the bus is at Atlanta Custom Coach now ready to be picked up). This morning, ACC owner Todd Lay e-mailed me pictures of the old and new batteries. I'd say this was the problem for sure!

Tom made buying/getting the replacement batteries very easy and almost painless! He quoted an outstanding fair price versus retail and had the batteries delivered in two days! (Ordered over the weekend, shipped Monday, arrived Wednesday). I can't say enough about Tom's generous help! If you're needing batteries (house or chassis), Tom Chilcote is THE man!


Some of the old batteries had actually exploded!
terrybattery1old.jpg

terrybattery2old.jpg

This is the new battery installation.
terrybattery1new.jpg

We're going to pick up the bus today and are going "camping" at Paradise Valley this weekend!

[JIM KELLER]

WOW ! Isn't it great these Buses have saftey features that shut things down before serious damage results.

Thanks for the update.

[Seabyrd]

Wow... you are so lucky that your inverters worked as long as they did... they are very sensitive to the battery condition..be sure that your inverters are programmed correctly now.... the one that shut down for sure... the default settings are not correct for the Vantare setup on my bus... ours also requires using 2 temperature sensors from the battery banks to the inverter.

Glad its all sorted out for you.

Diane

[Gary Carmichael]

Tom, is a good guy even if he is and old pirate, which he says I am but lost my eye patch and no longer qualify. Gary