landyacht318 wrote:
So I put the fan back in and the lid back on, hooked it up to the GT power meter, then connected GTpower to battery then turned on the 120vac. The voltage pot was set at 13.6v, the Screwy31 was at 12.4v and the GT power recorded a peak of 41 amps right after I flipped on the 120Vac. It dropped to 39 amps stayed there for a few seconds until the battery hit 13.6v then tapered quickly.
I then cranked the trim pot to the max and it rose back up to 38 amps, but then slowly dialed it back to 13.6v and then cut the 120vac as I want the solar to have some work to do come sunrise.
I think perhaps the pot should be near battery voltage before being cranked up and maxing out the power supply well beyond what it claims to be able to provide.
Best 23 dollars I ever spent.
Hard to know what is harder on the inrush thermistor: cold start at high input as designed, or lower inrush at first but then add input with the thermistor now warmed up.
Beware of the start-up at max v and a. That makes for high 120v inrush current and the inrush thermistor might only be rated for the normal starting v and a values the unit is rated for.
If you tweak things higher that will cause more inrush than the designer expected, so you could be standing into danger.
In the picture , it looks like a standard converter layout except no big finned heat sink down one side of it. The bottom left corner in the picture shows the standard 120v input set-up with the black thermistor right in the corner and a 120v fuse, etc.
The thermistor should have a size written on it in letters and numbers. The long thermistor thread last winter has a bunch of stuff on all that, where you can figure out if the one in there can handle more or if it is at its limit already before you tweak higher.
