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Kahoona · 06-24-2019, 08:28 AM

Yesterday I began the hunt. I started with "Patient 0", the GFI breaker that caught fire. It.s position is shown in pic#1. It was a Household type GFI if the "push the wire in" type so it was not the original. It had no outlet box. The fire started in the end where the wires connected and may have been from arcing due to a loose connection. It caught fire when I engaged the inverter. I had not plugged the RV in at that point and had just got it home from buying it.
The Romex wire ran over to the Passenger side windshield pillar and up into the AV compartment. I noticed that the dash had been removed before. There are two outlets up there. One on a solenoid, one not. These are outlets 2 and 3. The romex then goes into 1 thick gray tube from the outlet 3 back down the pillar to the base where it goes forward and disappears.

I have already removed the TV and it's associated components and I would be just as happy to remove all three of these outlets and replace the GFI function with a GFI breaker. I cannot figure out why there was a single GFI on the far end of a daisy chain. It would protect only itself.

Might not get back to this today but I will try.

Kahoona · 06-25-2019, 04:43 PM

Back to tracing these wires. 4 shows it exiting through the front. In 5 you are looking at the underside of the entrance stairs and it is the gray soft conduit.The picture is upside down and wires are running along the frame rail. In 6 it is the short section od gray on the left. This is shot up between the rail and the air tank behind the generator. 7 is behind the panel for the passenger seat electronics which has been pulled away. The gray soft conduit has come up through the floor and the romex inside connected to the outlet. Wish I had more time to dig but there were other things I had to do.

Kahoona · 06-27-2019, 08:04 AM

Yesterday I attempted to go further. Discovered that the gray conduit that came up through the floor has 2 romex wires inside. Both wires connect to the outlet #4 that is just out of sight on the passenger armrest panel. That means that it is a different conduit. I cannot see up there. I assume that there has been a junction with the wiring below the floor. The other romex must lead to Outlet #4. I would like to verify that and find out which outlet is #4 but the conduit is hidden. Will fry harder next time and if not I have to try to locate it by continuity.

Thinking that my problem is probably closer to the breaker box otherwise some outlets would work. Went back to the bedroom where the breaker box is and removed that Romex from the box for safety. I shoved a length of wire down through the foam filling the floor hole. I went underneath to look for it and found it above the frame behind a mounting plate where I might be able to sit up inside to get to it. Not having a second person to push on the romex which is inside a black sheath, grouped with other identical wires, I knocked off until I could convince the DW to get on the inside end of the wire.Pic 8
I started replacing the air filter while I waited for the DW to be available and discovered that the wiring is more visible from the air filter hatch.See Pic ( and Pic 10, look for silver wire. Good fortune.

With any luck the DW will help today and I can go forward. I was almost ready to call a pro

.

Kahoona · 06-27-2019, 10:18 AM

I give up.

Kahoona · 07-07-2019, 04:28 PM

OK. Back at it. This really should be titled no power to outlets in National RV. If a Mod sees it and can change it please do. I pretty well have the problem and answer figured out now. As someone here said there are two problems- one is a blown inverter and the other is some incredibly stupid repair work done before I got it that caused a dead short in a breaker on the dash.

The Xantrex 458 20 with a pair of 20a breakers was connected very wrong. The 120v output is provided, at the inverter by 2 pair of wires. One is for each of the two circuits. When it was installed both pairs were correctly run through conduit to an, outlet box. The outlets were marked circuit one and circuit 2 on the box lid. The wire pairs were screwed to either side top and bottom. A regular dual outlet was used and the top and bottom outlets were not separated but were parallel (if I have the term right.) In other-words I found that the 2 positive wires were connected together to the positive side and the two negative ones to the - side. The two circuits were actually combined together but powered by 2 20a breakers.

The breaker in the dash was actually a household one which should have been a RV style self contained standard outlet but instead was a GFI household outlet without any box to contain the fire. It melted and shorted. The breaker did not blow because the 2 20a breakers were strapped together. There was actually another GFI in the circuit which I knew about in the cargo compartment. When I removed it I saw that it had melted too but was inside a steel box and concealed. The Inverter's main-board burned out.
I am testing a spare inverter to see if it is good. If not I need a new one. I need to test the rest of that circuit just in case. I have already removed the dangerous extra GFI on the dash. I need to replace that output outlet from the inverter correctly. I'll let you know if I discover anything else. Those things that appear perfectly and neatly done can be seriously hard to spot when they go wrong.

Kahoona · 08-10-2019, 05:28 PM

In the end the problem resided with the wiring to the inverter along with the inverter having blown due to a GPS outlet that had been installed so that it was soaked buy wheel spray until it shorted. When the outlet in the basement blew it let the magic smoke out of the inverter and also blew the battery fuse. What we could not find was that the fuse block also was damaged and we didn't find it until it was load tested. Now things work. Just how is still a mystery but they work.