Electrical Help Please - 79 Argosy

[TammyS]

1st I am not eletrically savy at all.

I just bought a 79 Argosy. While I was doing the internal restoration I used shore power with a 110 hook up. Everything worked great. When I went camping and I did a stupid thing. I thought that a 50 amp breaker was ok so I pluged in the camper to a 50 amp breaker. That was the type of plug on the camper so I just assumed it was ok. I was wrong. i did not know it was a 220 not a 110 connection. There was a huming sound then a pop. There was this box over the stove that was smoking. It is some type of tester / control panel. Now nothing eletrical works. The breakers are ok and on, the fuses are all in tact and the outlets all have 120 volts when plugged in and checked with a tester but nothing will run from the outlets and none of the lights will work. Also the tester / Control panel will not light up like it did before.

What in the world did I blow up and where do I start?

Please, any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks
Tammy

[Birdwell57]

The good news is your camper didn't burn down. The bad news is anything that was turned on when you powered up is probably toasted. Were the things that don't work in the outlets now plugged in when you powered up?

[TG Twinkie]

Can you post some photos of this "Tester Panel" that you are talking about?

[markdoane]

The first thing to do is call an electrician.

Is sounds like someone has put the wrong plug on your camper. You should not physically be able to force a 120v plug into a 240v outlet. So it sounds like more than a simple fix.

[HowieE]

Lets see a picture of the plug on your trailer. As noted above there is no way you could put a 30 plug into a 50 amp receptacle. If someone did put a 50 amp plug on your cord they must have never plugged it into anything or they would have had the same result.

[Minno]

I got the impression that Tammy plugged her 30 amp trailer plug into a 220 volt outlet, similar to what an electric clothes dryer would use. Same basic plug/outlet configuration, right? But the voltage was wrong. The converter might be fried, and the big fuse or fuses to the battery might have blown as well, preventing all 12 volt items from working now. That would explain the lack of lights.

Tammy, you say the outlets all have 110 vac when plugged into shore power now, but nothing is working. How are you testing the outlets? What exactly do you mean by nothing is working? What exactly is not working anymore? If you plug a regular 110 vac fan or household light into the outlets, does that work?

Chris

[TammyS]

Thankfully I didn't have anything plugged into any outlets when I plugged it in, so nothing was fried other than the box above the stove. At least I think.

Tammy

[TammyS]

I will get a picture of the Tester Panel and the plug when I get home and post it. I know the plug has been changed because it has a clothes dryer price sticker on it.

When I bought the camper a few weeks ago a woman was living in it full time. She bought it from a local camper dealership a few years ago. It was plugged in to a meter box in a local trailer park and I know she was using the plug. There is a sales sitcker on the plug that says it is a dryer plug so at some point I know it was changed out. The sticker dosn't look to old. The camp ground I was staying at was an established park of a few years but the site I was on was new.

Chris - I have a meter tester and I when I put it into the outlets it tests 120 (119.7 amps) but when I plug in a fan or lamp it will not work. I checked all the breakers and fuses. They are all good with the exception of 1 fuse which I changed out in the fuse box by the inverter. The inverter works when it is pluged in directly to an outlet outside of the camper. There is another fuse that is blown on the Tester panel above the stove but it is sautered into the panel and I can not get to it.

Before this happened all lights but one worked in the camper as well as all outlets. Now no lights will come on and no outlets will produce power although they read 120 on the meter tester.

Thank you all for your help.

Tammy

[Birdwell57]

If you are getting 120 volts at the outlets, any 120v device you plug in should work with few exceptions. The box over your oven tells you whether or not your shore power is on, test your battery level, and the current level of your fresh and waster water tank(s). It may just be a step down transformer fried in it. PM me, I'm in your area quite a bit, I'll stop by and take a quick look.

[Minno]

Tammy,

Stop by a hardware or home store (like Home Depot, Menards, Ace hardware, etc.) and buy one of these: IDEAL® Receptacle and GFCI Receptacle Testers

This tester will tell you if something is miss-wired feeding the outlets.

When you say the meter shows 119.7 amps, I really hope you mean volts and not amps.

If you plug the converter into an outlet from outside the trailer, you say it works. Do the lights work then? The lights are 12 volt.

Chris

[Melody Ranch]

Luckily I remembered a thread here that mentioned wrongly wired power boxes...so I caught the infamous 220v dryer outlet/rv plug trap....in my recent case. The handyman/electrician can, and does, wire up supply boxes for the rv just like he does for a home dryer outlet. Your trailer plug will fit it too. You now have 220 available directly to the trailer....sizzel! You have to know what that out let at the park you were at had . Your posts make me think your not there and testing their power...
you said... "The camp ground I was staying at was an established park of a few years but the site I was on was new. "
I suspect that park out let box.

[TG Twinkie]

If you have the right plug on your trailer for 120 Vac, you will not be able to plug it into a dryer receptacle 220 Vac. But that doesn't mean you are always safe, just because it fits doesn't mean the receptacle has been wired correctly at the park. It's always smart to test everytime before you plug into a receptacle that is not known to you to be correct.