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ellisjte

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Posts posted by ellisjte

  1. Posted · Report reply

    Ok so guess what.  The xfer switch didn't cure the issue.  It turns out it just had a better tolerance for the excessive current the roof airs were drawing, I'd lose power after about 2 hours vs the 45 minutes to 1 hour I was getting before.  Testing revealed that after the AC's were running for some time they were drawing in excess of 20 amps each.  Once both AC's got going real good and both compressors would try to cycle it would kick out.  Not sure how the breakers didn't get tripped exactly, could be it was just under the tolerance of the breaker... I'll look into that soon.  In fact I may be better off just replacing them.

    The units still cooled well, but after 20 years I guess it was just their time.  Most likely just a matter of time until I started having issues on shore power too, or a fire..

    I just dropped in two Coleman mach 15 units to replace them and I was able to run both AC's for over 4 hours.  It kept the coach a breezy 74 degrees when it was right at 100 and sunny down here in FL. 

    Pretty easy install since there's no ducting or thermostat to deal with.  Hardest part was getting the new units on the roof and maneuvering them around.  Luckily my Dad came through at his RV resort with a guy on a front end loader.  That made it a lot easier!  Cost me 20 bucks and a cold beer.  I would have paid someone to do it but everywhere I called wanted 3 hours of labor PER UNIT!?  Total cost for install between $700 and $900  That is just silly for an easy job that should take an experienced RV tech 2 hours tops.  It took me about 3 and it's the first time I'd ever attempted one.  I got both units and all the pieces for $1800 from Lazy Days in Seffner, which surprisingly was not a lot more than the online prices I saw.  I'd rather deal locally with something like that since shipping those things back and forth in the event of an issue wouldn't be fun.

    Anyway, the whole point of my post is to let people know to check the draw on old AC units... or risk running around in circles like I did.  I'm pretty sure someone mentioned that pretty early on but I'd convinced myself the current draw couldn't be that bad for a couple of reasons.

    1. It was doing fine on shore power

    2. Time to kick out was longer if the cover was off of the xfer switch.

    In hindsight, I shoulda checked it anyway! 

     

    Thanks again for the help, and I hope this thread helps someone else out down the road.

     

  4. Posted · Report reply

    Thanks :D  The wife sits down with our Daughter every day when we're out and writes in our family camping journal.  I have a pretty great wife, she thinks of things like that... Me, I'm always thinking about getting meat on the grill and making sure everything works...  We're in Florida, based near Tampa.  Can't wait for our next outing to the Keys in a couple weeks!

  5. Posted · Report reply

    Let's try this again.  Last time I posted our new rig it blew up the message board for a couple of days and wasn't there when it came back up.  :D

    It's a 1997 Safari Sahara 3044 with a 250hp Caterpillar mated to an Allison 6 speed transmission.  We bought it back in Jan/Feb.  It's in amazing shape for a coach its age, and came with some incredibly detailed maintenance records.  It was pretty much ready to go when we bought it, just some odds and ends for the most part.   My wife and I along with our 6 year old daughter plan on hitting at least one state/federal park every month, and so far we've done just that.  The family loves it, and I have something to tinker with.  As you all know there's always something to work on with these beasts.

     

     

    IMG_20170408_091326.jpg

    IMG_20170408_091346.jpg

  7. Posted · Report reply

    Well, I finally got time to go out and install the new xfer switch... and the dang L1 connector was installed sideways.  No big deal just unscrew it and turn it around right?  Well normally it shouldn't be, but it must have been 1700 on Friday when they assembled that one because the screw that holds it to the contactor was stripped out already.  Now I have to wait for a new one.  =/

    Hope to be able to get her in weekend after this one and confirm the fix.

  8. Posted · Report reply

    Another update,

    I borrowed a multimeter that measures voltage, freq, and amperage.  Popped the cover on the ATS started the genny and waited, and waited.. with the cover off it took about an hour to start showing out.  Normally it takes about 25/30 minutes. That tells me something is heating up in the ATS and causing the issue.  When it kicked out I was still getting 120 on each leg where the genny feeds in and 0 on the other side.  About once every 30 seconds it would try to switch and fail.  Probably the circuit board going bad, could be exacerbated by bad contacts.  

    Freq looked good, never checked amp draw since I don't think that's my issue and I couldn't find a good place to clamp on the genny feed.  

    I'm convinced it is the ATS, how bout y'all?

    Ordered an exact replacement for 215 shipped.  It's an ESCO ES50M-65N.  I'll update after I swap it out.

  9. Posted · Report reply

    Ok quick update.

    Since it's going to be another week before I can get over to Dad's to borrow his gear I figured I'd take a look at the genny control board.  There's a heatsink bolted to a chip in the board that had vibrated loose, after seeing that I was sure the board was my problem.  Makes sense an overheating chip could cause my issue right?  I installed the new dino board and I'm getting the same results. 

     I watched the inverter control panel when it kicked out to get an idea of what's going on.  When it dropped it was all at once, not a gradual loss.  Then before everything came on again the voltage would flash 65 or 70 then back to 0.  It did this 3 or four times and took about 5 minutes to come back.  Then 10 minutes later the cycle starts over again.  ( Takes about 30 minutes from when I turn the second AC on to kick out initially)

    So I'm leaning ATS now but I'll wait till I can actually measure what's happening before I buy more parts... Although I may go ahead and do new starting caps on the AC's since the front one is almost surely 20 years old and likely not very effective anyway.

    It's an esco ATS, I plan to call them and see if that's an issue they've heard of before.

    Thanks for all the input everyone!

     

  11. Posted · Report reply

    Thanks Bill.  I was Air Force too, SATCOM.  Not a lot of fluid in a milstar antenna though!

    I figure the filters need to be changed on age alone since I can't find any mention of any maintenance on the tranny after the transynd switch over.  I'll get that done next week hopefully.

    I figure on sampling again around December when the engine oil is due.

     

     

  12. Posted · Report reply

    Hi all,

    I bought a 97 Safari a few months ago and I'm going through all the things it needs.  One thing I wasn't sure of was the health of the transmission fluid.  According to some very detailed maintenance records that I received with the coach the Allison MD3060 was fully switched to Transynd at ~66,000 miles.  The coach now has a little over 102,000.  The mileage on the fluid isn't an issue, but the fluid is about 8 years old.  Fluid analysis looks good, nothing bad in it, and viscosity checks out at 7.1, new fluid rates at 7.4 I believe.  So I'm thinking all i need to do is a filter swap and top off the fluid with some more transynd.

    I've attached a slightly redacted copy of my analysis and I'm hoping our friendly neighborhood retired Allison fluids engineer can pop in and validate or obliterate my conclusion.

     

    Thanks!

    Jason

    trans_fluid report.jpg

  13. Posted · Report reply

    43 minutes ago, huffypuff said:

    I'm not sure what inverter you are talking about but what I stated is the inverter inside the generator itself. The generator makes DC volts and has to be change to AC voltage.  It is the AC voltage wires that had bad connection inside the generator

    Yeah I should have slowed down to think about that for a second, the other inverter isn't involved here at all. 

    No way to look at that w/o dropping the whole thing out?

  14. Posted · Report reply

    25 minutes ago, WILDEBILL308 said:

    Well here again I don't know but suspect you can pull more power on shore power than with the generator. When you check the amp load see if you can check each ac  and see/make shure they are on separate circuits.

    Electrical Gremlins are as much fun as shooting a 2" scandium S&W 44mag.

    Bill

     

    I wondered that myself, that limit, if it exits would have to be between the genny and ats I believe, since the past the ATS it's the same if you're on shore or genny.

    Yeah those things bite!  Best left for emergency use only!

  15. Posted · Report reply

    8 minutes ago, huffypuff said:

     

    ellisjte, I hate to say this but that the same problem I experience this winter.  The wiring harness was going bad to the inverter in the generator and soon took out the inverter a 4K repair.  Yank the generator out of the coach, pull the panels and check the connection of harness to inverter before it's too late.  It can soon go to no 120 at all.  Mine had melted at the connection.  

    Yikes!  Yeah I'd like to avoid that if possible, previous owner just replaced the inverter a year before I bought it, it would be a shame to fry it!  Not sure if wiring rotting out would be as predictable as what I'm seeing but with looking at for sure!

  16. Posted · Report reply

    I'm in agreement with the suspicion of rebuilt AC's, but you'd think I'd be tripping breakers or at least seeing the same symptoms on shore power.  I'm still leaning genny control board but we'll see what my Dad's fancy multimeter and amp meter have to say at various points in the system.  The fun part will be waiting around for it to show out.  Ain't electrical Gremlins fun!

  17. Posted · Report reply

    They are 13,500btu dometic units with heat strips.  They seem to still work pretty good considering they appear to be original.  But it hasn't got real hot here in FL yet since I bought it.  Hope they keep up since we plan to do state park trips all summer too.

    The rear one was rebuilt according to the previous owner, I may dig up the ticket to see just what that entailed.  I thought it was typically more economical to replace.

    On a more serious note, everyone should own a desert eagle!  Mostly useless but very accurate for a pistol.  I can keep most of the rounds on paper at 100 yards (on a rest) Though I do tend to get less accurate after 3 or 4 mags.  It's got some recoil!  Not as bad as a 500s&w though. Tons of fun at the range and usually starts a few conversations.

  19. Posted · Report reply

    19 minutes ago, blakeloke said:

    Ah....sounds good Jason....please let us know what you find.

    Now I'm trying to figure out what you're shooting in the pic of you!

    Blake

    Hah, yeah that's my desert eagle!  It's a lot like a sports car.  Useless for most practical applications, expensive to operate, but it looks good and lots of fun!  Here's a better pic ?

    IMG_7442.jpg

  20. Posted · Report reply

    The more I think about it my money is on the generator control board at this point.  

    I'm pretty sure the grounding issues fried the board on the norcold fridge which caused intermittent issues. Seems logical I could be looking at a similar situation here.  Luckily my Dad has some good equipment (and expertise) I can borrow to diagnose this thing before I start buying parts.  I'll post an update when I can get time to grab Pops equipment and look at it again, might be a week or two.

    Thanks for all the input!

  22. Posted · Edited by ellisjte
    Auto correct got me!     · Report reply

    2 hours ago, kaypsmith said:

    Jason, what else is running at the same time that you are running the two AC's? Brett was typing at the same time as me so I deleted that part of my post. Well one other to add, while checking the ATS, be sure to check the voltage between the red and black connections.

    Just the AC's.  I can fire up just about everything in the coach or just the AC's and the result seems to be the same.  I haven't thrown the microwave in the mix yet though.

  24. Posted · Report reply

    Hi Herman, It's been doing this since I bought it about 3 months ago. The generator keeps on going, the 120 comes back on after a few minutes too.

    Some background, when I first bought the rig, the generator wouldn't start unless you jumped out at the posts.  Previous owner had taken it to camping world 3 times and they couldn't find it.  I was pretty sure we were dealing with a ground issue and sure enough I found a very loose chassis ground.  Once I tightened that down it fired right up.

  25. Posted · Edited by ellisjte
    Corrected generator     · Report reply

    Hi all, hoping someone can help me figure this out.

    1997 safari sahara, 250hp CAT, 6.3kw Onan LP generator.

    When running either AC on generator they seem to run fine.  Once I fire up the second they run fine for 15 minutes or so then all the 120 in the coach cuts off for a couple of minutes then comes back. AC's and all.  This cycle continues every 15 mins or so until I shut one of the AC's down.

    All is well on shore power, no issues there.  I suspect an issue with the ATS, or an auto switching breaker off some sort on the genny.  

    Any advice is appreciated!

    Thanks,

    Jason

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