BillAdams

Don't be afraid to sleep another night in RV. Just ensure your next RV has a household fridge. Problem solved! Sleep like a baby.

They are both on the same bus bar as they come from 2 separate 20amp breakers in the same breaker box located 1 above the other (every other breaker appears to be on opposite legs).

This cannot be good for the consumer. Very rarely is!

I actually misstated what I did. This really has nothing at all to do with 30amp coach wiring and I should not have used a 30 amp circuit as an example. My coach is a 50 amp coach and I have 2 hot lines that come into a breaker box with some of the breakers on leg 1 and some of the breakers on leg 2. What I did was pick 2 legs coming from the breaker box (each is actually connected to 20 amp breakers) that were on separate legs. This gave me the 240V across the 2 hots that I would get if I ran a normal 50 amp circuit directly. So, I have 2 20 amp circuits using standard 12/2 wiring (hot, neutral ground) but the 2 circuits are on separate legs of the incoming 50 amp power. What I believe the inverter wants as incoming power is a 4 wire circuit (hot 1, hot 2, 1 neutral and 1 ground). What I wired up was 2 circuits into the named connections. That is 2 - 3 wire runs from the breaker box to the inverter which means I did not have a 4 wire connection but rather a 6 wire connection with the 2 neutrals and the 2 grounds connected to the 1 neutral and 1 ground connection.

I wired it that way as that was the only convenient wiring available. Previous setups had simply being with 1 20 amp circuit (3 wire) and using the appliances on that circuit while the battery charger was in bulk mode nearly always tripped a breaker.

I was watching NBC Nightly News tonight and there were stories about death and destruction and other stories along those lines. However, they ended the nightly news with a story about a school taking care of the ducks being hatched and led to water by the local kindergarten class.....or whatever....I don't even care. It was a great story about great people taking care of some tiny creatures. I got all warm and fuzzy and somehow we need to petition the news channels to broadcast more good and less death and destruction. OK, off the soap box but I just love those little duckies!

According to the manufacturer the error we are getting "E05 A/C short protect" is not field repairable. The only service available is to return for repairs. Nothing has changed in the coach setup and the company has sent me 2 replacements under warranty. I won't even ask them to do it again as I am convinced that I caused the problem with my modified wiring setup. Thanks to you both for the thoughts.

The problem cannot be at the post as it has happened everywhere, all the time. This post does have the neutral / ground bond as I could test that with the unit plugged in but not powered up. I think the consensus is that I was trying to use a fault wiring scenario but trying to create a 50 amp circuit style circuit using 2 3 wire connections. I will see if I can get the inverter repaired and then run a correct 4 wire line from the existing transfer switch (generator / shore) and see if that keeps the inverter working. I bought a new transfer switch to go between inverter and the existing transfer switch but I don't think it was ever the source of the problem. Thanks to all for your input. Any followup ideas are welcome as well.

From the manual, the inverter does bond neutral to ground when 120V is NOT present. The testing I was doing with the inverter not working must be what was causing the coach to show the bonding. The inverter does bond neutral and ground when inverting. Manual p7: When the KISAE Inverter-Charger is running in Battery mode, the internal neutral-to-ground bonding system is enabled. The unit will act as an AC Source and will automatically connect the AC Output Neutral circuit to safety ground. When the unit is running in Pass-Through mode, the internal neutral-to-ground bonding system is disabled. The unit will not act as an AC Source and the AC Output to safety ground is disconnected inside the unit. Therefore, the AC Input source that is connected to the Inverter-Charger should have its own neutral-to-ground connection. If not, have an electrician look into bonding the AC Source’s neutral to ground at your AC Source.

Interesting followup. I now have the inverter completely out of the circuit and with the coach plugged into the pedestal but not powered on I have NO neutral to ground continuity issues anywhere (except the generator wires going to the transfer switch all beep no matter what 2 wires you touch!). There is neutral to ground issue at the Surge Guard even though I did not turn on the breaker outside. If I unplug the coach from the pedestal there is no neutral to ground continuity again. I am not sure it means anything, but with the power turned on any everything working there is continuity everywhere with every connection. So, it appears the coach is actually wired right and after all so I am back to trying to figure out what's blowing up the inverter (this is the 3rd time). If, as the instructions seem to indicate, the coach should have a neutral/ground bond what am I supposed to do? As I mentioned, when A/C power is coming into the coach I do have continuity on neutral and ground.

It has been suggested elsewhere that the way I wired the inverter could also cause a feedback issue. It is designed to accept a 50 amp input (4 wire) but I used 2 30 amp connections (6 wire) on opposite legs so I get the same power effect but I have 2 neutrals in the neutral slot and the hot from 1 leg in Hot 1 and the hot from the other leg in Hot 2. The 2 ground wires are tied together with a wire nut and a a jumper to the inverter chassis ground connection. I also changed this when I pulled out the inverter but I suspect it still has nothing to do with why I have continuity between ground and neutral. So now a question about how to find where this might be happening. Correct me if I am wrong, but I assume that any circuit in the coach where the neutral and ground somehow have come together would cause this issue throughout the coach. If that's true, could I disconnect all of the neutral wires from the neutral bar in the main breaker box and test each one until I find what I hope to be one bad circuit? If I am that lucky, would there be any way to trace that one circuit other can connecting everything back up and see what's not working? I can't see anyway that the incoming wiring could be wrong as the ground and neutral wires are very different (big fat neutral and solid copper ground) so I am thinking during one of the remodels someone screwed into a line or broke a line somewhere.

Yep, they burned up a lot of stuff in the coach when that happened.

You can also hire company's to drive the RV for you and then drive it back. My guess would be that this would be more affordable if you could find someone you could trust. Of course, that would also apply when it left your hands headed for the railroad yard.

Are you just looking for campgrounds to stay or are you looking for destinations. Are the cities listed in the order of your travel plan? Do you want full hookups and concrete pads or are you more interested in the journey? If you could give us a bit more information it would be very helpful. Is this a big rig, Class A, B, C likes and dislikes about where you park? I don't want to you to feel like you are getting grilled here but it's hard to answer your question if we don't really know what your hopes and dreams are.

The inverter is currently dead as a door nail so I am not sure that this will do anything but I will run some appliances that are on the inverter pass through and see if I read any A/C on the D/C circuit. I am going to have to beg the manufacturer to repair this unit or I am going to have to buy a new one so I want to ensure that whatever I do does not result in another burnt out inverter. Seriously, the only thing that changed was the removal of a faulty transfer switch (apparently very, very bad advice). Ever since I did this, the inverter has not lasted more than 6 months. I do want to find the actual source of this problem so if anyone has any ideas about how I should work my way through the wiring system to find where something went terribly, terribly wrong I am open to any and all suggestions. While this might not have anything to do with anything, a few years back Prevost did not properly plug in our coach and we ended up with 150+V (an high as the meter goes) on one leg and 0 V on the other (open ground/neutral?) which burned out many of our 120V appliances. Thanks in advance to everyone!

No one can answer this question. You MUST find out what the coach weighs at each tire. That means you need to find someone who can put a scale under both front tires and then both rear tires and the both tag tires (if appropriate but not likely on your 30' coach). Once you know the exact weights you will have to go the the tire manufacturers site and see what the right pressure would be. If one side is heavier than the other, you must use the heavier side to determine air pressure for both sides.

While I do all the oil and filter changes on my genset, I have 2 problems trying to do my own diesel engine oil changes. 1st, we full time and most every campground would throw me out for doing this kind of work on my coach. 2nd, I don't know how to get the 8 gallons of oil out of the coach and to the recycling center without making a mess somewhere between point A and point B. So, I let the manufacturer (or Freightliner) do the oil change along with a full chassis lube. It's a once a year thing for me so being a millionaire is not required to afford a $400 oil change. Over $100 of that is the oil alone so shoot me for spending an extra $300 a year.

You should contact David Bott. He bought a Tour and then had Winebago take it back. He now owns a Tiffin. You can contact him via his website http://www.outsideourbubble.com/ or he is an active poster on the Tiffin RV Forum.

I do get a tingle from time to time from the stainless body panels. I have for years and years. I avoid barefoot on wet soil!!! I can't even think where to start. I assume the power cord would go directly to the transfer switch the wires for both hots are black going into the transfer switch so they go somewhere else first. There are 2 50 amp breakers (confusing) one labeled main and one labeled shore and a 3rd breaker for the Generator. Could the wiring be reversed between the 2 breaker boxes (red/black reversed as I don't see any way to reverse the large neutral and the bare ground wires). Is there some way to trace a circuit where input and output are 40 feet apart? I can start disconnecting wires and see what goes where. In the meantime, can I assume that this has not been a problem in the past was the additional transfer switch that prevented any A/C shore/generator power from being active at the same time the inverter was active (although the battery charger would have still be charging while on shore power). By the way, the inverter powers dedicated lines which are only powered via A/C pass-through of the inverter or with no 120V inverter power. If the inverter is taken out of the circuit there is no power to these 2 circuits.

I see I am also in the wrong category. Could someone move me from Electronics to Electrical, please? Thanks..

So, with the coach unplugged from the pole but plugged into the coach I do not get any continuity reading of any kind on any lug in any combination. Checking the port where the cord connects to the coach I also get no continuity reading between any 2 connections. However, this wiring leads to the Surge Guard surge suppressor and there I get infinity continuity between green and white or touching chassis ground and green as well as chassis ground and neutral (white). I see that same things at the main transfer switch after the Surge Guard. Does the Surge Guard bond neutral and ground somehow?

This is the link to the inverter http://www.kisaepower.com/products/abso-inverter-chargers/abso-inverter-chargers-low-frequency/model-ic-1230150/ IC-1230150 3000 watt sine wave inverter with 150 amp charger. By bonding do you mean that the neutral and ground are somehow touching or jumped?

This is a 3000 Watt inverter/charger (Kiase). The output is 120V and the input is 120V but it will take a 50 amp input (2 120V hots) with 240V measured between the 2 hots. I am not running a standard 50 amp cord to it, however, which would have red, black hots plus neutral and ground. I am running 2 30 amp connections from my breaker box. They are on opposite legs of the incoming 50 amp power so I have 2 sets of 12/2 wiring. Each of which has 1 hot, 1 neutral and 1 ground. I am connecting 1 hot from each to hot 1 and hot 2, the 2 neutrals to the 1 connection labeled neutral and wiring both grounds to the ground connection.

I see it just fine using Firefox.

When I bought this coach it had an inverter that was not also a transfer switch (separate charger and inverter) so there was one transfer switch that controlled the switching between shore power and generator and another that controlled the switching between inverter and no power from either shore or generator. After installing a new charger/inverter combo with integrated transfer switch I was told to remove the 2nd transfer switch as it was no longer necessary. I wired 2 incoming 30 amp 3 wire A/C connections which are on separate legs and provide 240V between the 2 hots. To wire this up I put 1 hot in the Hot 1 connection and the other hot in the Hot 2 connection with both neutrals in the neutral connection and the 2 grounds connected to the ground post. This allows full battery charging plus full pass-through of power on that circuit. There are 2 outputs and there are 2 120V lines that go into the coach from the inverter. The output side has connections for 2 hots and 2 neutrals for each line and the grounds are combined into 1 post. The problem is that after awhile, the inverter fails saying there is an A/C fault that cannot be recovered from and requires repair/replacement. The manufacturer says that this can only be caused by A/C feedback (sorry for the long story). The company has been good enough to replace it twice under warranty but it just happened again. I have not "used" the inverter as I have been parked in the same location for many months but the inverter was "on" in the software despite always having 120V power. One morning we wake up and it's showing the error. Nothing happened and nothing changed other than the inverter and the battery charger are now dead. My first question is, what is A/C feedback and would that be coming from the A/C input side or somehow from the 2 - 120V lines coming out of the inverter that power dedicated plugs inside the coach. Second, would re-installing a 2nd transfer switch solve this problem? Again, this transfer switch would keep the 2 lines going into the coach from the inverter isolated from the inverter as long as shore or generator power was available and would only send power to the plugs inside the coach from the inverter if neither shore power or generator power was available.