I think I fried my inverter- i wanna cry-help?

[tampaliquors]

'06 SMB, tripp lite inverter, dual batteries, starcool AC, everything was great, shore power worked perfectly...ect, now I thought, I should get generator.....went to the honda dealer, we hooked up a 2000i to make sure it would run the truck, then.....heard the compressor under driver start thunking, microwave lights went out, inverter wall panel lights went out......ughhhhh, now only 12V, shore power from house not even coming through. GFI not tripped, battery fuse ok, reset buttons intact.... any suggestions before buying new inverter AND how could this have happened?? generator was on for a few minutes, plugged in, turned breakers on, then AC, then disaster!!

[Scalf77]

I don't think a 2000I will run StarCool. It sounds like you had that running, it could be that you need to reset the triplite. There are two resettable circuit breakers on the triplite unit, under the operating switch on the front panel.


Greg

[tampaliquors]

thanks for the reply greg, the guys at SMB indiana where it was built thought there should be no problem for that generator to run my AC. and i did try the reset buttons.....i think i'm gonna be buying a new unit. i can't even run shore power through it now. bummer

[SMBDAD]

So did you hook the generator up to the shore power plug? Is this the way it is supposed to be hooked up? I am going to carry a generator, so I would like to know the proper way to put power to the SMB.

[tampaliquors]

that's the way I did it, just like it was an outlet at a campground. thought I did everything right, expensive mistake whatever it was that happened!

[NRL]

Is the Starcool even connected to the inverter? It shouldn't be.

If your running the generator, you should connect which ever air conditioner straight to the generator.

Sounds like the air conditioner was connected to the inverter and just drew to many amps and went into that mode. On the Tripplites, there is a switch that you toggle to reset it.


Or if your plugging it in to the RV 30amp/ or 15 amp connector then you need to make sure the star cool or what ever air conditioner your using (in my case a portable air conditioner AMCOR) is not plugged into the inverter; it should be plugged in a bypass that is getting it power from the shore power or generator and not from the inverter's (110V)

If your "not" running a generator and have big batteries and want to run an air condition:
About the only air conditioner that would ever be used with the inverter would be a tiny air conditioner that uses less then 100amps (12v) or less then 8amps(110volts). Something like a 6500btu one bearly works if your running it off battery and usually would only work for 1-2 hours off a big AGM battery.

Otherwise, it's got to connect direct to the generator, or shore power.

Same scenario goes for winter and electric heaters, if you have a tiny 30w-100watt heater connected to your inverter(powerverter) then you can run it off the inverter, but if you have like a 400w-1000watt heater, it will drain your battery in a hurry.

[tampaliquors]

NRL, thank you for the detailed response. everything is hooked up the way the folks in Indiana did it. I have used campground shore power and starcool worked great ( here in hot florida ) assumed generator would function just as campground outlets did.

[Scalf77]

My thoughts are that the documentation that you have seen on Sportsmobile web site is for running the "Danhard" air conditioner. The StarCool was the previous unit, I believe the selling point for the new Danhard was that 1) it could run off of the batteries for a short time, and 2) that it could be powered off of a Honda 2000 generator. There is still start up current that you need to overcome and for that your inverter may need to do some load sharing. The Starcool pulls more current and thus the H 2000 may not have been a juice. I do not see anything wrong with the way you hooked it up from my understanding ( I don't have a gen). I did pop the breakers on trip lite last year and had the same results. This was caused by overloading the unit as we had Starcool running, microwave, coffee pot. This was fixed by a reset of the output circuit breaker. You have said that you engaged all the resets so apparently that is not it. Sorry I can not be of more help

greg

[daveb]

The shore power plugs are 120V. You didn't plug into 220 on the generator did you (if a 2000 even has that capability)? Also remember that 120V is polarized (there is a neutral, a ground, and a hot leg that must be wired up correctly). But even at that many devices have protection. You might be OK.

[skrivan]

hey NRL---tell us more about your AMCOR air conditioner....where do you keep it and how do you run the window vent? happy with it? thanks