12V Surging Problem

[Lukeaa]

My 12V system is surging with the interior lights getting brighter and then dimmer over about 20 seconds. It stops for a while, then happens again.

The house batteries show 14.85V and the fan on the Magnum charger is running. When I turn off the charger, the voltage drops down to 12.2V over about a minute.

Any ideas out there?

[Lukeaa]

My 12V system is surging with the interior lights getting brighter and then dimmer over about 20 seconds. It stops for a while, then happens again.

The house batteries show 14.85V and the fan on the Magnum charger is running. When I turn off the charger, the voltage drops down to 12.2V over about a minute.

Any ideas out there?

[Sixpack98]

Shooting from the hip it sounds like you may have a problem with the Magnum charger or associated connections or equipment. 14.8v is too high and if the house batteries are seeing that high of a voltage they could be damaged. If you are still under warranty I would schedule a service visit asap. Maybe a call into Magnum might yield an answer, maybe they have seen this before and have a fix. Hopefully, someone on this forum has seen this before. Good luck.

[Lukeaa]

After turning off all of the 12V draw overnight, the batteries are stable at 13.1V this morning. It appears that I had too many 12V fixtures and both furnaces running at the same time. Plus, I had left the storage bay lights on. It appears that the charger was constantly cycling on and off to keep up with draw. New coach, new learning curve.

[AKBrick]

Hi Lukeaa,
Ah yes, the old storage bay light trick on you. That happened to me when we just moved in to ours.
Our lights dim and brighten also when the charger kicks on and off. When our batteries are fully charged and the batteries go to absorb they are at 14.something also and then hang around 13.5 when plugged in and float charging. It's still taking awhile for me to get used to the electric system in this coach. These things REALLY suck down the power.

Now, if only there was a way to shut off the bay lights at each storage compartment, I'd be happy.
AKBrick

[abray]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by AKBrick:

Now, if only there was a way to shut off the bay lights at each storage compartment, I'd be happy.
AKBrick </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sounds like a project to me!!!

[Robin_M]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by AKBrick:
Now, if only there was a way to shut off the bay lights at each storage compartment, I'd be happy. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
AKBrick,

You know that the switch is a 3-way, right? - at least it is on my coach. One side is at the front entrance door, and the other switch is in the service bay. IMHO, there ought to be an indicator light in some obvious point because I can never tell from the switch position at the door (even if I take the time to look) whether the lights are on or off. An indicator light on the dash would solve the problem, I think. Maybe that's what the "project" should be.

[SacsTC]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">IMHO, there ought to be an indicator light in some obvious point because I can never tell from the switch position at the door (even if I take the time to look) whether the lights are on or off. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Robin, on ours, the switch by the door has a light built in to it.. If the switch is on and the bay lights are on, the small light in the switch is on..Does yours not have the lighted switch???

[Sixpack98]

Rob,
Learn something every day. I did not know it was a 3 position switch. Makes sense, I do have a switch in the bays. Maybe I ought to look for a light (per SacsTC) thanks

[nodine]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Sixpack98:
Rob,
Learn something every day. I did not know it was a 3 position switch. Makes sense, I do have a switch in the bays. Maybe I ought to look for a light (per SacsTC) thanks </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Same here. Ours has a light in the switch at the door and a light beside the switch in the service bay. You can turn them on at one location and off at the other is you desire.

Bob

[Sixpack98]

Boy am I , Bob and Ronboc. Rub it in Bob . I've always turned the light on and off from the same location.

[AKBrick]

Yup, We have the storage compartment light switch at the passenger seat and the utility bay. What I'd REALLY like is to be able to turn the compartment lights on/off in the individual compartments at the lights themselves. These lights do not have the on/off switches on the sides of them like the ones on our ceiling. Then I could use the switches at the passenger seat or utility bay as "Master" switches to turn off and on at night or when ready to leave.
Uhhh..did you catch all of that?
AKBrick

[Lukeaa]

I have the Magnum ME-2012 inverter.

I sent an email to the Magnum Tech Support last night and they called this morning. In the meantime, I had tried to play with the remote control for the inverter that is on the control panel in the coach. I managed to turn the contrast up past 100% and it went blank. So now I could not see anything relating to the inverter.

The tech said that the factory default reset is achieved by unpluging the phone wire for the remote control from the inverter. This will bring the display back up. Following the instruction in the manual, pushing the TECH button for 5 seconds will not work. Known bug.

He also said that each time you unplug from shore power, the inverter resets itself back to factory defaults. There is a setting on the control panel to tell the inverter how many AC amps you are connected to, i.e. 20, 30, 50. My inverter was set at 30 amps, though I was plugged into a 50 amp. He thinks the problem was as I suspected, that the charger was cycling on and off. The charger thought it only had 30 amps of AC available, so it was not giving the DC side enough amps to run the many lights that I had on. Thus it was cycling on and off excessively. I am out of the coach this week, but I will try it when I get back.

Regarding the bay lights: I have the lighted switch inside the coach door. I have not noticed any switches inside the bays, but have not looked hard. I have picked up some of the stick up LED lights at Costco. The new ones have sensors on them, so they come on when you open the bay door. They work fine for the small bays and inside cabinets.

[AKBrick]

Luke,
We have the Magnum 2012 also and it works great. We have the Magnum Energy panel that lets you select Inverter or Charger. It also has the Shore, AGS, Meter, Setup and Tech buttons along with the dial. I really should read up on this as my wife is showing me up on the technical stuff. We also have the 50 AMP Smart EMS Load Meter by Intellitec which allows us to manually select the types of amperage we want the system to use, but we generally let it do it automatically as it's smarter than us, er..I mean me. It's good for being plugged to an overloaded system and you don't want to trip a breaker.

That light from Costco sounds like a good thing. I think I'll check those out.
AKBrick