Bypass Univolt with Intellipower?

[afn10694]

I found my buzzing univolt in the rear curbside wardrobe under the tubin my newly acquired '71 Soverign 31' It did not seem to be adding a charge to my new Marine battery (no voltage at battery disconnect on univolt side). So I figure the overstock Intellipower 9245c on ebay are a relatively inexpensive replacement for less than 1/2 list. Now I look at getting the univolt removed and it looks like a bear. Any Secrets?? For a fix right now I think (in the next months I plan to pull the rear area and replace some floor--when I pull the tub I should be able to remove the univolt more easily and save the fuse compartment). Right now I envision the following: Disconnect the AC feed in the lower compartment and put a grounding female plug on it for the Intellipower. Put two 8G wires from the Intellipower to the appropriate wingnut Marine terminals on my battery. Ground the intellipower to chassis. Is their anything else I need to connect or disconnect. I do have a possible issue with the electric that I must follow up on--if I plug into a 20amp Ground fault circuit at our house, it blows the GF immediately. If I use a regular circuit it powers the Trailer fine. I guess I will try it on the GF one circuit at a time and try to pinpoint what I need to concentrate on. I have a service manual with diagrams. And plug in a 3 prong tester at each outlet. First off I want to get the 12volt working--does the above plan sound reasonable--I cannot see where anyone has done it this way to avoid working in the cramped closet quarters.

[Lumatic]

Pulling the old Univolt is not that bad. Some folks salvage the Univolt fuse panel to hook up with the Intellipower. You should be able to find information in a search.

[ALTE797]

Not sure about your 71, but the Univolt replacement in our 78 was easy. Our Univolt was plugged in to a factory-installed receptical box, perhaps yours already has the box but it's not easily visible. We simply unplugged the Univolt , tore it out and plugged in the Inteli-power. The output wires need to be cut from Univolt, and moved over to the Intelipower (thats the most complex part but again fairly easy) - I think I published a procedure on this ...

[afn10694]

I Installed the Intellipower as I described in post #1. I Mistyped and did not catch it--my Airstream is a '73 Soverign, not a '71. The manual says to remove the univolt by removing the two screws fastening the plywood platform down (not the 4 shock mount bolts). One screw was easy but there is now access for the second screw is under the tub in the bath, and the platform stradles the battery box. Could get it removed by taking out the battery box compartment, but I am going to wait until I work on the floor in the back end and remove the tub and fixtures. In any case, I disconnected the AC to the unipower, Stuck a plug on the AC source (no recepticle, just wire nuts under the fuse panel, soldered some terminals on two 5 foot lengths of 6 G wire, hooked it to the unused wing nut terminals on the battery and the appropriate terminals on the Intelliport, wired a ground to the intellipower, Screwed the intelliport down to the floor under the bed, plugged it in and it worked like a charm. Univolt is still in place and its fusebox is functional. Will remove the dead weight of its converter section when I work on the rear floor. All but one of the DC circuits is working fine. Circuit to bath lights and rear overhead lights not functional so I have some trouble shooting to do on that circuit.

Jerry

[RiverRat]

My 1965 Safari has 3 12 volt circuits with 25 amp circuit breakers. I am adding a Suburban propane/electric h2o heater that requires another fused 12 volt line. I do not trust the old circuit breakers due to age.where can I get a 4 or 5 circuit /DC board with regular Buss fuses? I have a new Intellipower ready to install.

[Lumatic]

Originally Posted by RiverRat

My 1965 Safari has 3 12 volt circuits with 25 amp circuit breakers. I am adding a Suburban propane/electric h2o heater that requires another fused 12 volt line. I do not trust the old circuit breakers due to age.where can I get a 4 or 5 circuit /DC board with regular Buss fuses? I have a new Intellipower ready to install.

Check bestconverter.com. Randy is a Forums member and is not afraid to talk to his customers.

[JimGolden]

Intellipower makes a unit that has the converter and the panel as one assembly. I forget the callouts, but they have them in various sizes. I got a 60amp one. I am going to convert my trailer from 30amp to 50amp.

But anyway, the intellipower panel/converter combo is a slick piece. You might want to check those out. I ordered one from some RV discount parts place online and they hosed me.....if I could recall the name I'd list it. It was like RV Fun Products or something like that. They had it advertised at like $190 or so. I ordered it, waited waited waited waited, emailed them, called them, nobody would contact me. Finally I was checking their website and they had them on there for $105 more than the one I'd just ordered from them. I emailed them and cancelled my order. Dude finally emailed me back and basically said jump in the lake, I should have ordered a day before . HELLO! I ordered it off their website at their advertised price! Anyway, I found one on ebay, new in the box, from a good guy in Elkhart who runs an RV supply house and he had it for $10 more, only it was the better one with the LED at each 12v fuse so you look for the light to see which fuse is popped. It's a really nice unit, and I will install it soon.

Right after I install the new Dometic 2852 and the new Carrier 15,000 BTU a/c.

Best of luck,

[RiverRat]

The combo unit looks like the way to go. I checked out bestconverters.com and they have one.Hope I can return my intellipower?

[waltero]

I was surprised, took out the univolt, (always easy to take things apart it seems)
installed the intellipower and a new fuse/relay...the whole process went well, have been using the intellipower over a year, very happy with it...

[RiverRat]

Jim, What brand & model did you install? I found a model 4035 made by intellipower but don't know if it has the led indicators.

[JimGolden]

Hi Riverrat,

My Intellipower is a model 4560. They make a 4545, 4560, and 4590.

I believe the 4545 is the 30amp model (45amp max input), the 4560 is the 50amp model (60amp max input), and the 4590 is the 80amp model (90 amp max input).

I believe you can get all three sizes with or without the LED indicators. It generally adds about $50 or so, and I originally wasn't going to spend the money. But as it turned out, I got them for only $10 more. I bought mine from a fellow named Keith, and his email is cat0023@yahoo.com. He's got a store on ebay. He's really nice; runs an RV surplus place out of Elkhart. He had a bunch of converters, so it wouldn't hurt to give him a shout.

On the Intellipower 4500 series, I know the 4560 and the 4590 use the same panel; I bet the small one does too. And the converter can be easily removed from the front. So once you get it all wired up, you never have to pull the panel back out. The converter portion (also an Intellipower) just comes out and you can send it back to them to fix it.

I've not wired it up yet, but it will fit in the same spot as my original converter. Shouldn't be too bad. Worst thing is I'm converting from 30 to 50amp, and so will have to run a new main wire and get a new plug setup and cord. We've go a trip coming up in about three weeks, so I'm not going to mess with it right now. I'm installing my new fridge right now and need to do the new a/c after that. So I'll just have to use energy management on this trip (no water heater and microwave and a/c at the same time...). I'll do the wiring job after that trip.

Best of luck!

Jim

[AirConditioner]

I'm getting ready to do the same switch-over from a Univolt to an Intellipower (model to be determined). I had a nasty "swinger" short in the red power line at the front vent fan I finally found and corrected. During my tests to find this intermittant short I also discovered that the original Univolt fuse panel had developed corrosion problems at the rivets that hold the fuse blocks to the backing. There was a considerable voltage drop across these high resistance points. I'd recommend anyone doing an upgrade consider replacing the fuse panel as well. I have read other posts that mention or infer this fault as well.

Having said that, how have you all who have done the upgrade wired up or replaced the (1) ammeter/volt meter feed to the front console the (2) trailer/car battery fuses (40 & 50 amp) that the Intellipower block doesn't support, and (3) the main battery (+) and (-) fuses (40 amps)?

I figured I'd just install separate fuse blocks, but would like to hear any options from your experience.
Thanks.

[Aage]

Originally Posted by afn10694

my Airstream is a '73 Soverign, not a '71. <snip> All but one of the DC circuits is working fine. Circuit to bath lights and rear overhead lights not functional so I have some trouble shooting to do on that circuit.

Jerry

I have the '74 version of the same trailer, and I have the exact same issue with the bathroom lights and the ceiling fixture over the little hallway where the two closets face each other!

The service manual correctly points out that the purple wire from the Univolt feeds those items, plus the ceiling and reading lights in the sleeping area. The ceiling fixture in the sleeping area and the lamps over each bed are intermittent, in that from time to time they shut off.

I found that if I wiggle the fuse for the purple wire on the Univolt (circuit #2 IIRC), the sleeping area lights will come back on, however not the bathroom or hallway ones. There doesn't appear to be any serious corrosion on the fuseholder, by the way.

I located the switch for the large light fixture over the sink and had a look at the connections (there's a hatch to get at them) and everything looked fine, including the infamous purple wire.

Anyone have an idea of where to look for the fault?

[Melody Ranch]

I'm having trouble too. I got the 4045 and am building an electrical system from scratch. Just what AirConditioner (above) said. Can an expert here diagram out an installation with the connects and those fuse locations. The Intellipower instructions are poor....at least not aimed at my limited abilities.
There are numerous folks here having the same problem...we need that expert.

[AirConditioner]

Sounds like this is a problem that maybe out there and just being recognized, or maybe age is catching up with our units! There is NO visible sign of corrosion in my univolt fuse panel. To quick-fix it I drilled a few very small (1/16 bit) holes in the rivet to bond it to the panel. This did help, but the fix was to remove the major short.

Details for those inteerested in reading more: Sorry I didn't take a picture, but my intermittant short was due to (1) corrosion of a connection in the front vent to the fan causing varilable high resistance with humidity increases, and (2) an actual bare portion of the wire where it was pinched under the interior skin and had slowly worn down the insulation. There was a good bit of corrosion at that point. I only found it because I started troubleshooting with a voltmeter, and kept dividing the problem circuits in half til I located the area it had to be in.

This really could have beena FATAL fault.

If the corrosion had not been a slow process with a partial short but caused a dead short this may have sparked/heated enough to cause a fire. I cannot explain why the 20 amp fuse did not blow during these "short-outs". To be safe and to prove out this was the ONLY problem - I changed this circuit to an 8 amp fuse.

Symptoms:
The 12 volt system just seemed to loose power and all the lights dimmed and flickered. I also found that the ground lines in the Univolt also were corroded in the fuse panel capture lugs. Additionally, the fuse holders would get warm to the touch. Thinking this strange, I powered the circuit from the battery using an inline fuse, I measured very low draw with an ammeter and no probelm in the circuit. So I figured it must be the fusse block.

Converter location bad:
I also don't like the converter location - under the shower! I plan to install all electrical upgrades in the first under-bunk bay with an inverter and additional gel batteries. Initially I planned to install fuse panel and controls for solar (near future) in wall adjacent to the bed nearest the rear shower, but I did not want to rewire in the walls, and did not want to extend the feed lines any further than necessary.

Wiring Diagrams From "Experts" sought:
This would be great, and I believe a few have been posted here. In my web searches I have seen a few fairly detailed step-by-step replacement tutorials.

The reality in the RV improvement world is that suppliers (a few have been named above) are often willing to provide great general directions, but I tell myself that (1) their expertise is the basis on which many make their livelihood, and (2) there's always more general and special liability when you are a recognized "expert" and give specific advice. So I understand why this is somewhat lacking. There may be a few (I bet a lot!) of IEEE's here who may be willing to help.

[AirConditioner]

Originally Posted by Melody Ranch

I'm having trouble too. I got the 4045 and am building an electrical system from scratch. Just what AirConditioner (above) said. Can an expert here diagram out an installation with the connects and those fuse locations. The Intellipower instructions are poor....at least not aimed at my limited abilities.
There are numerous folks here having the same problem...we need that expert.

Here's a great site that provides good 12 volt info. There are many others out there in a Google search. This site is also on the BestConverter.com site - RV Technical Articles

We clearly need some more research and maybe we can corral a highly experienced electrics expert member into coming up with a design that's good enough for adaptation to what most of us are looking to install.

Maybe we could start doing the searches and compare notes from here and web searches in the electrical forum??

[Aage]

Originally Posted by AirConditioner

Details for those inteerested in reading more: Sorry I didn't take a picture, but my intermittant short was due to (1) corrosion of a connection in the front vent to the fan causing varilable high resistance with humidity increases, and (2) an actual bare portion of the wire where it was pinched under the interior skin and had slowly worn down the insulation. There was a good bit of corrosion at that point. I only found it because I started troubleshooting with a voltmeter, and kept dividing the problem circuits in half til I located the area it had to be in.

Are you referring to the first ceiling vent, counting from the hitch on back, the one in the lounge area? You don't mention your trailer year and model, but if it has the Univolt under the bath, it could be a similar model to mine. The lounge area fan/light works perfectly on our TT.

When we had our first clean & fix-up session with the trailer, I noticed that the ceiling light/fan in the galley area wasn't working, and upon investigating it I found a wasp nest just under the vent lid and the power wire just dangling loose in mid air, above the screen.

Clearly the connection had been made on the "weather" side of the screen, so I pulled the wire through a hole in the frame, then stripped and re-connected it inside, covered by the ceiling light's lens cover. A-OK for that one.

The sleeping area lights, ceiling and individual over-bed ones are, as I mentioned before, intermittant, though. However, they respond to jiggling the fuse, which leads me to think that your idea of checking all the connections for corrosion is a good idea.

But those sleeping area lights are on the same wire/circuit as the bathroom lighting and rear hall light/fan, and that part of our electrical is dead.

How would you troubleshoot that section? All the wiring, with the exception of the connection to the Univolt and the switch I discussed earlier is hidden behind the walls. I sure hope I don't need to take out the floor, endcap, bath, or anything riveted in.

Any other thoughts, Airconditioner?

[AirConditioner]

I have a 1972 Overlander with rear bath. Univolt is under the bath. The wiring follows the main central run towards the front control panel. The wires are accessible at every vent, and run through the AC unit area on the curb side. In a few places I've cut 3x3 openings, installed a shallow plastic electrical box, and covered with 4x4 covers after doing wire splices. I've seen this approach also used on the exterior when access had to be made. A small hatch was installed to give the required opening utility.

In your case it sounds like there is a spliceor wire failure at one of the points towards the fault. Work towards the fault verifying you do or dont have power progressively. Worst case is you have to use an existing wire to pull a few new ones (and a pull string for future!). Make a diagram of your wiring and your findings as the puzzle unfolds.

It's also possible to use more advanced wire fault detection tools - Home Depot and electrical supply houses sell units that can trace along the wire to determine exactly where the fault is without cutting or physical attachment.

I think it's great for us to document our findings as best as possible so others can use as a guide or verify their work. My experience here is most of the faults exist are similar in many other units.

[afn10694]

Originally Posted by Aage

I have the '74 version of the same trailer, and I have the exact same issue with the bathroom lights and the ceiling fixture over the little hallway where the two closets face each other!

I found that if I wiggle the fuse for the purple wire on the Univolt (circuit #2 IIRC), the sleeping area lights will come back on, however not the bathroom or hallway ones. There doesn't appear to be any serious corrosion on the fuseholder, by the way.

When I started to troubleshoot this problem, I used my voltmeter probes to start probing voltage at the univolt fusebox. When I probed the upper right Circuit 2 fuse, I heard like a little click and the bed lamps and overhead came on. Later when I replaced the overhead switch with a longer one to put in a bright new lamp cover, the bath lights suddenly worked. I was using about a 15 ft lead with alligator clips on both ends in conjunction with the voltmeter to trace any bad circuits, but I did not have to even go that far. Hope I have not used up all my luck for the year!

[Aage]

Originally Posted by afn10694

When I started to troubleshoot this problem, I used my voltmeter probes to start probing voltage at the univolt fusebox. When I probed the upper right Circuit 2 fuse, I heard like a little click and the bed lamps and overhead came on.

Exactly what mine did, too. The little click, then on again. However, mine would go off again, if, say one of the lights was turned off (or on). We clearly have the same fault.

Originally Posted by afn10694

Later when I replaced the overhead switch with a longer one to put in a bright new lamp cover, the bath lights suddenly worked. I was using about a 15 ft lead with alligator clips on both ends in conjunction with the voltmeter to trace any bad circuits, but I did not have to even go that far. Hope I have not used up all my luck for the year!

Wow, so maybe what happened was that there was a short in the original switch that was somehow cutting out the bath lights! I'm going up to the camp today, so I will certainly have a close look at it, and take along some CAIG DeOxit switch cleaner with me (it's great stuff).

That switch isn't a simple one though, is it? I mean, it turns on the 6 lamps in banks of two, so it's a four-position unit: OFF, 2,4,6 lamps.

Where did you find one with a longer shaft? Can you tell I'm replacing lens covers too?

I found a source for longer cranks for the other three covers that hold openings and/or fans (Can-Am RV), but I just bent in the cover enough to get the original knob on for the ones I already did.

Jeez this place is incredible. Never thought I'd get help on the exact problem I'm having. It is VERY annoying not to have lights in the bathroom!

Thanks very much for helping me out!

Cheers,
Aage