Converter Issues

[maxndale]

I purchased a used 2012 5th wheel. I am having issues with the converter and getting low DC power warning on my fridge. Short story I hooked up a battery charger to the the house battery and everything works fine. I have tried to get to the converter which is under the breaker panel in the steps but its impossible to get to without disconnecting a ton of wires. You cannot get to it thru the underneath of the camper unless your a 3 year old.

So I have cut some panel and was able to barely reach and pull the three fuses which test fine. With tool I was able to reach the power plug with plugs into the bottom of the breaker panel which cannot be reached. I took the power cord and plugged in with extension cord directly to the power box on our camping lot. Everything worked fine I checked voltage at battery and got 13.2 volts. 3 days later low DC power on my fridge.

In checking the GFI breaker is tripping on the campsite power box. Tripped twice today.

Any ideas? Bad Converter? Bad battery? What would cause that GFI to trip.

[twinboat]

If your plugging the converter into a standard 15/20 amp GFCI outlet on the campground power box, with an extension cord, it would likely be the converter causing a ground fault.

Take the extension and plug it into an outlet in the RV. The RV campground outlet doesn't have a GFCI, right ?

Let us know what happens.

[fasha]

Same thing happened to me while on a trip. The fridge became a cooler. It turned out to be the corrosion on the terminal where the battery cables connect to. The alternator wasn't charging the batteries properly. After a good cleaning the voltage came back to normal. Mine isn't a 5th wheel but maybe there's corrosion on one of the connections.

I also found that the fridge had trouble starting properly after the low voltage warning and after I deleted the error codes out of the control panel it worked better

[maxndale]

The campgound box DOES have a GFI plug. It trips to red light, then you reset to green. Checking later it has tripped again. The second time it would not let me reset the plug. My converter is an 80 amp converter. It has the standard 20 amp type plug. I got a conversion from the 20 amp plug to a standard 15 amp style plug and plug into the extension cord to the box. I have unplugged everyting and went back to my battery charger on the house battery which I have been using for weeks successfully.