Thought I would pass along a little lesson I learned today to perhaps save some time when trouble shooting electrical problems. My son and I went bird hunting in Montana, first night out, dry camping, half the lights, furnace, water pump and overhead fan would not work on battery power. Reading lights worked fine. We hooked up the generator and all the above worked fine. I figured a short or broken power or ground wire somewhere in two of the
12 volt circuits which I would trouble shoot when home. But why would everything work when plugged into 120v power but not on battery alone?
Got home and started testing all circuits, two did not have power with battery, although they did with shore power. I measured the battery and discovered it was not charging when plugged into shore power. So short version, I finally took the cover off the Univolt and found one of the two old type 120 volt round screw in fuses was loose, couldn't possible be that easy! Yes, that was the problem, everything now works on battery and/or shore power. So why do 2 of the
12 volt circuits depend on the 120 volt fuse in the Univolt? I thought the
12 volt and 120 volt would be totally independent.
I had installed a propane cat heater before leaving and it kept us warm without the use of the battery.
Linear Mode
