Desperate for help.. Isolator to battery bank! - Page 3

superduty · 08-14-2018, 02:37 PM

so the problem was the fuse holder... See pics. The supplied self tappers they sent were 5/16 and the lugs can go on two ways but only one way to allow the cover to go on.. see pics, the screws are so tall that it pushes on the lug.. I found continuity on negative to Aux terminal on isolater... I wish i knew more about this stuff and hadn't spent two days trying to fix it

thank you for all the messages and I see I got an inbox and several people offered there numbers and help! Thank you guys so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Flux · 08-14-2018, 02:45 PM

That would explain why when you put the ground to the chasis it sparked. YIKES.

superduty · 08-14-2018, 03:02 PM

right lol... gosh that made me so frustrated I wanted to pull out all my hair... why would they ship those screws knowing this.. i can't be the only one that this has happened too... Turned a few hour project into two days

i guess i did get a cool firework show every time I connected ground tho..

1der · 08-14-2018, 03:39 PM

Danny, Glad it worked out safely! Your hair could have been on fire or your rig could have been in melt down. DC voltage seems so benign until one discovers you can arc weld with it!

This is an awesome group, quite amazing really. Lance camper guys are good people, too. You have a Lance on the bed of your truck? Post a pic or two! Post up some full-timing observations, always helpful. Cheers!

arctictraveller · 08-14-2018, 08:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1der

Danny, Glad it worked out safely! Your hair could have been on fire or your rig could have been in melt down. DC voltage seems so benign until one discovers you can arc weld with it!

That might be an understatement! I've only seen a couple cables glow red, but it was always a scary situation. Glad nothing really bad happened.........

Scalf77 · 08-15-2018, 08:33 AM

Yes, very glad that you got that sorted out. More importantly nothing was damaged. Unfortunately your short to the chassis was probably before the fuse, thus when jumping in the connection the house batteries to ground, you now created a direct short with the fuse outside of that loop.

I took the liberty of redrawing your diagram and changing your fuse location, I also added an additional fuse.

F1 is your original fuse from house battery to inverter.

F2 I moved your original fuse to the battery side of your isolator. If we are looking to fuse this line it would be better to have that close to the source of power.

F3 I added this fuse close to the House batteries. While it does not appear that your isolator is bidirectional, there is still a large battery bank with a large gauge wire running unprotected.

-greg

superduty · 08-17-2018, 06:43 PM

that drawing looks awesome! I just ordered the extra fuses and lugs to add them! What a kick ass group of guys.. Here is a pic of the truck and camper. What program did u you use to draw that? Got a few more questions if anyone has time or should i open a new thread?

superduty · 08-17-2018, 06:46 PM

Hey greg, like I said I'm a total noob with this stuff... now that I have the bank installed, isolator, and all that is good, it only gives me a single dual gfi outlet... it doesn't work my lights, range hood, radio, fans ect... Any idea how to get this to the panel? I have the cover off the panel and i have a 110v side, 12v side a charger /switch on the bottom... the dc side of it I can see the inputs and hooked my welding jumper cables to the inverter post to the post on the dc side and all my lights worked ect as a test but would it be okay to go from battery bank to that panel? Should i fuse it? Can I use house wire?

Flux · 08-17-2018, 07:47 PM

Scalf is the man. Helped me a ton.

Scalf77 · 08-18-2018, 06:04 AM

So I think you have a couple of question in that post, although both related as to how you hook into the campers original electrical system.

The first would be how do you hook into the 110 AC electrical system, seeing as your inverter only has one GFI outlet? Unfortunately that answer can get pretty complex depending on your inverter, so if you can post your inverter model or manual we can go from there.

The second question is how to you tap into your existing camper 12 volt system. You should have some existing panel where your 12 volt fused distribution is. Sounds like maybe you have one of those power panels such as a Progressive Dynamics PD4560K12LV 60 Amp Converter Panel. So again need some idea on what you are hooking it to. Even a straight DC fuse box will have some kind of specs that tell us what the maximum load is. From there we can decide the size wire and fuse to use to connect. Hopefully this can get us started.

-greg