A neighbor's grandson and his wife are visiting , from Washington state,
with the Mercedes van they're fitting out for full-timing. They're got it
barely liveable with only 12 VDC wiring completed. On the way here, they
had smoke, sparks, flames, and the fire department near Phoenix. The
"isolator" was sparking and the lead from the two 220A AGM batteries 20
feet away melted almost in two inside a wall. I won't go into the faulty
design decisions that allowed that to happen, like the absence of CB's, but
want to ask for ideas:
This is the "isolator" (really a combiner) which first alerted him to a
problem by emitting sparks:
amzn.to/2KUzWHM
or
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WTAFR5W?tag=amz-mkt-chr-us-20&ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-org00-win10-other-nomod-us000-pcomp-feature-scomp-wm-5&ref=aa_scomp
Since he threw the destroyed "isolator" away, I can't examine it for clues
as to the cause of the problem. Does anyone have any experience with this
device? I can only assume that it somehow shorted to ground internally, but
I'm skeptical about that...
I'll try to help him correct his design decisions and will even offer him a
Yandina 160A relay to connect as a "manual combiner/boost switch", but the
linked "isolator" seems like a good buy -- unless its prone to such
failures.
Any input appreciated; the young couple's going to be around for a while to
use my shop and service rack to do more work on their rig.
Ken H.
with the Mercedes van they're fitting out for full-timing. They're got it
barely liveable with only 12 VDC wiring completed. On the way here, they
had smoke, sparks, flames, and the fire department near Phoenix. The
"isolator" was sparking and the lead from the two 220A AGM batteries 20
feet away melted almost in two inside a wall. I won't go into the faulty
design decisions that allowed that to happen, like the absence of CB's, but
want to ask for ideas:
This is the "isolator" (really a combiner) which first alerted him to a
problem by emitting sparks:
amzn.to/2KUzWHM
or
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WTAFR5W?tag=amz-mkt-chr-us-20&ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-org00-win10-other-nomod-us000-pcomp-feature-scomp-wm-5&ref=aa_scomp
Since he threw the destroyed "isolator" away, I can't examine it for clues
as to the cause of the problem. Does anyone have any experience with this
device? I can only assume that it somehow shorted to ground internally, but
I'm skeptical about that...
I'll try to help him correct his design decisions and will even offer him a
Yandina 160A relay to connect as a "manual combiner/boost switch", but the
linked "isolator" seems like a good buy -- unless its prone to such
failures.
Any input appreciated; the young couple's going to be around for a while to
use my shop and service rack to do more work on their rig.
Ken H.