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kidoo · 12-03-2016, 10:35 AM

Hi, my friend has a Tiffin Phaeton 2009 and his Automatic transfer Switch TMH50-3 is not working, no more power getting to the house or to the battery charger. One of the ground seem to be tosted in the box.

Do you know any good electrical shop in Yuma AZ?

Is there any replaceable parts inside?

I will try to send picture.

Kiawah · 12-03-2016, 01:16 PM

Turn off the shore power, and disable the automatic generator start so no power goes into the xfer switch, until someone can check out the wiring that's burnt.

Depending how long it takes to get repaired, he may want to go out and purchase a battery charger to keep the house battery voltage up. Otherwise he may end up with a bunch of ruined batteries as well.

Someone with advanced electrical experience, could wire the shorepower line directly to the coach breaker box feed wires .......bypassing the transfer switch. However it's not clear if those wires are the ones burnt.

kidoo · 12-03-2016, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiawah

Turn off the shore power, and disable the automatic generator start so no power goes into the xfer switch, until someone can check out the wiring that's burnt.

Depending how long it takes to get repaired, he may want to go out and purchase a battery charger to keep the house battery voltage up. Otherwise he may end up with a bunch of ruined batteries as well.

Someone with advanced electrical experience, could wire the shorepower line directly to the coach breaker box feed wires .......bypassing the transfer switch. However it's not clear if those wires are the ones burnt.

Ok, we found one of the wire going to the shore power contactor broken. It was probably arcing and finally broke off. There is some rust on a near screw so the wire probably broke off due to rust and vibrabtion.

Anyone knows how to have a picture in this post?

kidoo · 12-03-2016, 01:43 PM

Kiawah · 12-03-2016, 08:42 PM

Looks like the wire that burnt is actually part of the switch.

If this was mine (as an electrical engineer), I'd replace the switch as opposed to trying to fix the old. That switch is probably close to 8 years old, and even when everything is working great you'd have some pitting of the contact points in the relay.

I would think he can find a replacement switch pretty quickly, and if not comfortable working with this wiring could find a mobile tech (or electrician) to install it for him.

I don't know if it's even worth the effort to pull the switch first and wire the shore power cable directly to the coach wires to the fusebox on a temporary basis. He should be able to fix it correctly fairly quickly. Well now that I think about it, forgot that tomorrow is Sunday.....

luvlabs · 12-04-2016, 08:48 AM

Your friend can call Tiffin on Monday and get a new transfer switch or he could go to almost any RV supply and get a new transfer switch. There should be several shops in Yuma that would have one in stock. Shouldn't take more than an hour to change it out. Generally, there are no replaceable parts inside.

kidoo · 12-04-2016, 06:51 PM

Here is the update.

On Friday, he went to see a mechanic to check things up. After a $100 shearching, the mechanic did not find the problem and told him to come back Monday.

My friend went back to his campsite and after a few talk over the net, we found a broken wire, the one in the picture, and he reconnected the broken wire with a lug. It did not fix the problem completly but he had 120 volts but no battery charging.

On his way back to the shop today, he met an RV'er and they started to look at different things. The batteries where not charging and the inverter was blinking red. The stupid mechanic that checked things up on Friday inverted the wires at the inverter. They just properly rewired the inverter and bingo, everything was working fine.

Now he can check for a good shop and see what can be done.