More WFCO Woes

[BFL13]

Friend with new to her 2008 Class C called saying while camping with grand-daughter and some dogs, with hook ups, the lights are dim and going dimmer back and forth.

So I as an rv.net trained "tech" am off to the rescue! 🙂

120v intake was ok, output at the converter was 11v sometimes 8v. Disconnected the single (new) 12v battery (voltage 10.6--yipes)

Lights in rig still work, so converter is working--but lights still going even dimmer at times then brighter. I have no clue how bright is normal with her rig. Still 11v and 8v at times, so converter has to be the culprit.

Attached my PowerMax adjustable voltage converter with wire clamps, set to 13.6v to battery wires in her rig. Ta da! Lights now very bright. Also now getting four lights instead of just three on the idiot light battery monitor.

Ok detached the PowerMax, installed a charged up 12v batt I took along just in case---lights still bright, re-attached the PowerMax at 13.6 and the lights went a little brighter. All is good!

So it seems the WFCO is having problems. It works with no battery and you get some voltage--11 or 8 so it seems like it is working but acting up a bit and the lights are really dim. BUT obviously the thing is not working right at 11v or 8v

So the plan is to get that WFCO out of there when she gets back and replace it.

I found it to be very confusing at first, that the WFCO was working with no battery so I suspected the battery, but the voltages were just too low and it kept dropping from 11 to 8 back and forth, with no battery at all, so it had to be the WFCO converter at fault.

(I have since recharged her battery and will get mine back and the PowerMax in a later swap)

[wa8yxm]

Came home from church and lights dim fridge flashing.

My 13 year old Progressive Dybanics 9180.. NO output (Fuses good)

Oh well the factory is not that far out of my way and I was looking for an excuse to go that route.

Battery Tender (Big one) in boost mode just now.. Wi-fi resettable when needed so will monitor and watch and change modes manually for a bit.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Returning to magic mushroom land of WFCO

I purchased .003" sheets of carbon graphite. Before the Wiffie barfed I set a small barrier between the resistorus erectus and the capacitor. It dropped temperature by 25F. Even a tiny muffin fan on that side of the circuit board makes a huge difference in component temperature. Two choices with the original fan - go higher CFM or give the perverter a lobotomy. Eliminate the fan and go with a smaller one like mentioned above.

The Hyperwatt has a replacement for the original Megawatt fan. 30% more watts. Then a larger fan in the front of the case blowing straight down onto the toroid chokes and transformer.

The build-it-cheap philosophy reminds me Chinese aptitude. Takes too long and costs to much to plug things in and see if they work.

SHIP IT! I'd take a bet not one WFCO executive Boondock RV's. And if one did they would be using a competitor's converter.

Recycled electronics in the US --- where do they go? I can see trying to recover copper, tantalum and a bit of gold, but the process would be net sum minus.

Oh well, I have a prohibited from sale in California battery charger to fix. Mail all of your non fixable electronic chargers to...

Governor Jerry Moonbeam Brown
1315 10th St, Sacramento, CA 95814

[MrWizard]

no
but i had a blue eye Siberian husky
who would climb the juniper bushes in the back yard in Oxnard and then hop over the fence and be gone

[MEXICOWANDERER]

He later joined us around the campfire. But his smog emissions became intolerable. Ever see a malamute climb seven feet into a ten foot pine sapling?

[Ralph_Cramden]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
90% of purebreeds are walking defective genetics displays and have the brains of a Collie or Afghan. I became the owner of a breed Malamutt that ended of needing seventy dollars a month of Viokase for a pancreatic fault.

"Oooooo, why don't you show him?"

"Why? What does that get me or the dog?"

He ended up in paradise high in the sierras, rolling in snow and thieving my goddam fourteen dollar aged cheddar cheese.

That's hilarious...........was he constipated a lot? LOL.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

90% of purebreeds are walking defective genetics displays and have the brains of a Collie or Afghan. I became the owner of a breed Malamutt that ended of needing seventy dollars a month of Viokase for a pancreatic fault.

"Oooooo, why don't you show him?"

"Why? What does that get me or the dog?"

He ended up in paradise high in the sierras, rolling in snow and thieving my goddam fourteen dollar aged cheddar cheese.

[MrWizard]

I used to go to dog trials with a friend
And there is one this weekend, at a nearby park
Many if not most, no shore power available
In hot weather the generators are running and the genturi is attached, the RVs need the A/C for the canines inside

[MEXICOWANDERER]

"An alternative may be to bypass that regulation, pick a voltage, and make a failed WFCO into a fixed voltage charger"

Ooooooooo,
Putting the fan way down on the end opposite the heat producing versus sensitive components makes a nice lab. What happens when a 170F vertical inch and a half tall ceramic resistor is place a half inch distant from one of two finals electrolytic capacitors? "Let's bake a lowest grade highest ESR capacitor".

Instead of using a correct thickness heat sink with lots of surface area fin radiation, WIFFIE chooses to use a headsink that can double as a wheel chock. "Let's heat things up and increase materials and shipping costs"

Transistors, rectifiers, electrolytics, carbon resistors (Oooooo did I mention the 1/4 watt mini toasters on the circuit board?)

Wait Wait I Found It!
A Picture Of The Coffee Urn In The WFCO R&D Lab...

[BFL13]

She still had three more days camping to do with FHU. The Vector does not stay on like a converter, so a converter was the answer set to 13.6. I left the WFCO running as is. It does not have its own breaker. At 11 or 8 volts it will mean nothing against the 13.6 volts.

I left her with a charged up battery on 13.6, and took hers home with me to recharge it. The critical time is when leaving, she will have to turn off the PowerMax and put it away, but still needs 12v to finish up, so I wanted her to have a good battery for sure, and also for anytime the campground 120v might quit for some reason. She does have the alternator method which I forgot about.

At home, her newish marine/rv 27 dated 7H (August this year I think) on the Vector took 40.4 amps constant for a couple hours (I did not note the actual times) before tapering slowly. When it got down to 3.6 amps, I changed to the 4 amp setting and hit the Equalize button and it did that overnight. Morning, it was saying Full and when disconnected, battery was sitting at 13.29. That will bleed off by itself to 12.x. I did not put a load on it. I ASSume that battery will be ok, but that is for the future.

Being on rv.net for long enough, I figured it was going to be the converter when I heard about the lights dimming and brightening back and forth. I have the notion it is capacitor trouble in the converter that makes it act like that, so I was ready to just by-pass the converter for now in case I could not fix whatever was going on.

[2112]

I found it to be very confusing at first, that the WFCO was working with no battery so I suspected the battery, but the voltages were just too low and it kept dropping from 11 to 8 back and forth, with no battery at all, so it had to be the WFCO converter at fault.

Did you measure this at the battery connection or the WFCO?
Did you check for poor connections? Couldn't a loose ground cause this symptom?

[westend]

Unfortunately you will be presented with too long a length of undersized wire which you will feel obigated to upgrade, and then the existing battery ring terminals will appear to have been inadequately installed by a meth addled gorilla with a hammer crimp with a fondness for elecrical tape which was first run through a sandbox and ...............

"It's all in a day's work.." as they say. Might as well get her totally setup right (I'm sure BFL will do it).

I've seen a few posts on WFCO repairs and recovery on this Forum. The bad news is that if a guy makes the standard repairs, you're still at the mercy of the poor charging design. A guy with a little electronic acumen may be able to enable a better charging profile with the exchange of some parts.

Since reports of the WFCO's failing to produce 14+V for any suitable length of time so that batteries are charged fully and quickly (typical), The real fix may be to swap out IC's and components so that the charging schedule gets right.

An alternative may be to bypass that regulation, pick a voltage, and make a failed WFCO into a fixed voltage charger.

[landyacht318]

I have a nice finned heatsink and 80Mm addo computer fan from a failed Wfco from my neighbors RV. An Iota dsl-45 now resides there and two costco later GC-2s replaced some wally world 27s and he loves to tell me how well it works in comparison.

The Wfco fan was too loud exhausting my electrical cabinet though, and a bit of an ampwhore, I replaced it with the Noctua NF-12 that was on my fridge condenser, when i put Noctua's latest 120MM fan(NF-A12x15) on the fridge condenser instead. It is said to outperform 2 NF-f12s in a push pull configuration.

Thats all I can say about the Wfco, good for Recycled parts. I also use some of the flat steel inside of it as a ground plane for my Alfa wireless Wifi adapter.

Will the vector charger handle usage as a converter? The smart chargers I presented with changing DC loads on a battery in the 80%+ charged range freaked out and shut down when loads got shut off.

Your adjustable Powermax set to 13.6v, dont touch the dial, on full hookups, will perhaps eventually get battery full, and keep her in DC power, until the replacement converter arrives, and you then get to install that for her.

Unfortunately you will be presented with too long a length of undersized wire which you will feel obigated to upgrade, and then the existing battery ring terminals will appear to have been inadequately installed by a meth addled gorilla with a hammer crimp with a fondness for elecrical tape which was first run through a sandbox and ...............

[MEXICOWANDERER]

[time2roll]

I still recommend the small 35 amp unless 3+ batteries charging on generator.

https://www.amazon.com/Powermax-PM3-35-MBA-Battery-Charger