Recent troubleshooting fun
My travel trailer suddenly began throwing a breaker which had me baffled. The circuit was labeled "GEN" (I have no generator) but actually fed the 12v systems in the camper (OH lights and battery charging from the convertor). I did my due diligence and removed the panel and checked all the wiring at the convertor and breaker with no isses found. My battery was old so I suspected it may have failed internally and was shorting the circuit and even considered the convertor may be shot. I am no electrical genius but can use a multi tester with some success. I decided to go ahaed and replace the old battery as it was now completly dead anyway and that made no difference, breaker would stay on about a second or so, the convertor would hum as it powered up and then trip the breaker.
So I called in for some help from my oldest son who is an industrial mechanic with some experience in the electrical side of machines and I was amazed at how much that boy (He's 35) has learned.
He proceeded to stick the multi meter in different spots and seemed baffled and pronounced we have a dead short somewhere. He decided to completely remove the convertor from the panel to remove the 12v systems from the equation and the breaker still tripped indicating a short in the 120v side of the panel not in the 12v side from the convertor.
We began searching for everything that was fed from that circuit to eliminate them as the source of the short and were not finding the source of the short. He asked me if there was anything else that would run off of the lighting circuit that was 120v? I have one 120v light fixture over my dinette.
So we proceed to remove the light fixture entirely and make the wiring safe and low and behold, the breaker held. A freaking cheap 120v light fixture was shorting (most likely from the attached switch) and caused me a days worth of headaches which he isolated in 1.5 hours. He reinstalled the convertor back into the panel, I trashed the light fixture and all is well. I love that kid
So I called in for some help from my oldest son who is an industrial mechanic with some experience in the electrical side of machines and I was amazed at how much that boy (He's 35) has learned.
He proceeded to stick the multi meter in different spots and seemed baffled and pronounced we have a dead short somewhere. He decided to completely remove the convertor from the panel to remove the 12v systems from the equation and the breaker still tripped indicating a short in the 120v side of the panel not in the 12v side from the convertor.
We began searching for everything that was fed from that circuit to eliminate them as the source of the short and were not finding the source of the short. He asked me if there was anything else that would run off of the lighting circuit that was 120v? I have one 120v light fixture over my dinette.
So we proceed to remove the light fixture entirely and make the wiring safe and low and behold, the breaker held. A freaking cheap 120v light fixture was shorting (most likely from the attached switch) and caused me a days worth of headaches which he isolated in 1.5 hours. He reinstalled the convertor back into the panel, I trashed the light fixture and all is well. I love that kid
