Converter Upgrade 1996 Winnebago Brave

[John_N_Terry]

Things are quite a bit slower here in Smiley, TX the last couple of days. So, I took the opportunity yesterday to give us a birthday present. I ordered a converter upgrade kit as ours got pretty much toasted due to a company generator issue. Yesterday was the day to replace it!! To be honest, I was more than a little nervous, as I am NOT a mechanically (or electrically) adept individual.

To make a serious understatement...it wasn't that bad at all!! It actually looks more daunting than it is. After breakfast I shut down the generator, removed the 30 amp plug from the socket, disconnected both the house batteries, disconnected the starting battery, (probably didn't need to but I thought, "better safe than sorry") opened the windows, drug out my meager tool collection, and went to work.


The old, dead converter. We've been using a Battery Tender Plus for the last week to try to stay on top of our batteries. It's all I had.


Breaker area exposed. To begin, I asked DW to make several labels so I could label all the wires I removed. It helps to know where to put everything when the new unit goes in. The fuse panel to the right had to come out, and all the wires attached had to be removed. I labeled them 1-8 so I would know the correct order to replace them. I also re-used the fuses from the board. At this time, the hot wire from the converter to the breaker and the ground wire to the ground bar had to be removed and labeled, as did the power wires from the batteries.


After the old converter was completely unhooked, I slid it out. Then I replaced it with the new converter, re-ran all the pre-labeled wires to the new fuse panel, connected the hot wire to the breaker in the upper center of the picture, and ran the ground wire to the ground bar to the extreme left of the picture. The new unit came with a neutral wire that was run to the neutral bar to the upper left of the picture. Then I ran the battery wires to their proper location...it's all rather simple as the board is marked with what goes where. At this point it was just a matter of sliding everything back in place. The new converter is a tight fit, but that's a good thing as you really do not want things to slide around while driving.


Replaced the breaker cover and screwed everything back into place, restored power to the RV, flipped the breakers on, and everything worked as it should...easy breezy!!


Last thing was to place the brown cover back on...

So now the interior lights are brighter, they do not flicker, and there is no annoying whining sound when two or more lights are on simultaneously. We're also getting 3 stage charging to our house batteries without the likelihood of burning them up as the older converters do.

If a converter swap is in your future and you aren't mechanically or electrically adept...have NO fear about it. Honestly if I can do it...anyone can do it!

By the way, we now have a portable EMS!

[bjsheldon]

Nice job! great post.