Major short in generator wiring - Pictures
Had a major short and near fire due to the wiring from my generator this past weekend. While on the road we had the gen running with the a/c going. The wife went to use the microwave and when she did ...
Forum Discussion
Junior30 wrote:
One thing that did confuse me was there is also another much heavier stranded copper wire that comes from the gen and it looks like it runs toward the battery compartment. i am not really sure though where it goes or its purpose. i can say the wire that burned up looks quite thin to handle all the power to run the entire coach.
That other wire is the 12V lead to the generator from the battery. It is a quite heavy wire because the generator's starter requires a lot of current when its cranking--the starter on my Onan 4KY is somewhere around 90A or 100A in operation, roughly speaking. The wire needs to be thick partly to safely carry the current but mostly to minimize voltage drop when cranking.
When the generator is running, it still uses 12V power for its control circuitry, but it's a much, much lower power requirement than for starting.
