Converter blowing fuses

[brainpause]

Short story:
I may have screwed something up by accidentally touching the - and + poles of the battery with a wrench while installing the wiring to the camper.

It is an Elixir ELX 45 converter. The 30 amp fuses (#10 and #11) keep blowing as soon as I throw the blade switch at the battery. These fuses are, by the manufacturer's labeling, the reverse polarity fuses. The battery is hooked up correctly.

Long story:
Going through a divorce, so I haven't been able to set eyes on the camper for 2.5 years, much less take care of it. So the battery was dead. I had a side post battery that was keeping a charge, so I decided to hook it up so that I could have lights, run the slide out, and empty the trailer out for selling.

So I bought some threaded bolts to make it work until I could either sell it (without having to purchase another battery), or get a consigner to come get it.

While ratcheting the bolts/wires onto the battery, I accidentally touched the ratchet to the opposite pole. Sparks flew, of course.

I took the small DC distribution panel off to inspect for burn marks, but there are none. Also, the wiring is in good shape. I then removed the whole converter to inspect wiring behind the converter. All good there, too. No burn marks or varmint chewing.

Installed it all back, and checked for shorts using a multimeter. Could not find any.

Did I fry that little board? Is it replaceable? I have little money...that is why I'm doing the work myself. I hope this is an inexpensive repair if it's just the little board.

Larry

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Intense sympathy amigo for your agony. Your position can be thought as running buck naked through a poison ivy patch inhabited by a black mamba.

Force-feed yourself humor. Comic strips, movies - to reduce stress and tech mistakes.

[BFL13]

You got the converter out before so take it out again to where you live that has 120v power and do a bench test. If it is a hard wired 120 you can use an old cut off appliance cord, wire- nutted to the 120v converter wires so you can plug it in. Use your meter to see if it is outputting 13.6 DC.

With the converter gone, and the battery hooked up do the 12v items in the rig work? If not, use your meter along the pos and neg paths from the battery to the fuse panel battery lugs to see where the 12v is not showing. Maybe across a fuse or that switch.

Unhook the battery and take it to where the fuse panel is inside and find the two battery lugs where the pos and neg wires come in from the battery tray.

Use a set of ordinary jumper cables to go from the battery posts to those battery lugs and see if the 12v things in the trailer work. If they work from there but not from the battery tray end of the wires then the short is back down those wires but you missed it.

[SCVJeff]

Unless and until you can do the test Chris is suggesting you will never know wether the converter is working or not. IMO the 1st priority is finding a way to power that box up. Anything else is total guesswork.

[wa8yxm]

The Common (not standard) practice for automotive connections for DC wires is "Balck = Negative"

however you will note I said NOT STANDARD.. There is no STANDARD

RV's tend to be wired not by Automotive technicians
RV's Tend not to be wired by Electronics Technicians (we use the same practice)

I'm cross trained in 3 fields when it comes to wiring.. Both of the above where black is negative

And house wiring where Black his NOT (Positive on the 12 volt side of life)

So do not trust the wire colors

OPEN switch
Replcae fuses

Apply volt meter

CHECK

And if needed REVERSE batteries.

[brainpause]

Chris Bryant wrote:
Just unhook the battery and see if it works. If it does, test the polarity atthe battery, if it blows the fuses again with no battery, the converter is most likely toast- not surprising for an Elixir.

Good idea, but I have no way of doing that, short of getting a generator. I now drive a Chevy Sonic, so no hope of that. 🙂

It is also parked in the apartment storage lot, so no external electricity available.

Today I plan to take the bottom panel off and look for obvious issues.

Thanks for the ideas, so far, friends! Keep them coming!

Larry

[brainpause]

BFL13 wrote:
Top posts you can use 180 but side posts 180 can be facing the wrong way. Any chance getting the side posts facing out has the pos and neg 180 from the way the top post battery was?

Posts are facing the same direction. I triple checked because I thought maybe that's what happened.

[Chris_Bryant]

Just unhook the battery and see if it works. If it does, test the polarity atthe battery, if it blows the fuses again with no battery, the converter is most likely toast- not surprising for an Elixir.

[BFL13]

Top posts you can use 180 but side posts 180 can be facing the wrong way. Any chance getting the side posts facing out has the pos and neg 180 from the way the top post battery was?

[brainpause]

The wires are too short to be hooked up incorrectly. The battery can only be hooked up also with it sitting in a certain configuration. So it is hooked up correctly, 100% sure.

[K_Charles]

Don't trust the color of the wires when hooking up the battery. If the polarity fuses blew the battery is most likely hooked wrong.

[BFL13]

Your idea of correct connection might be wrong since the fuses keep blowing.

[brainpause]

More info: I've been researching since I posted this.

I see that there are more electronics below the "fuse board", that I forgot about. I guess I was exhausted, and it was getting dark too.

So I guess I'll go back to the camper and inspect those boards below. That may be where I see burn marks or something.

The "good" news is that I can replace it with a Boondocker board, without having to replace the whole thing, for a reasonable price, and reasonably easy. I just want to get this thing running again and get whatever money I can get to my attorney.

Larry