I think this is one of my greatest hits (I don't mean this in a good way).
Last week, I was troubleshooting my converter/charger. In doing so, I had to remove two 30A fuses from the fuse board. This was to measure its output voltage. That problem was solved in an unexpected way (I had another thread; thanks everyone for suggestions
).
The fuse board on mine (2016FC23D) looks like the picture below with three 30A slots. When it was time for me to put back the two 30A fuses, I realized that I didn't remember which two slots to use
. I happened to have another 30A fuse, so I said to myself, "What the heck, let's put one in all three slots. What could possibly go wrong?
" Afterward, because the voltage meter was reading a proper voltage at the batteries (and onboard voltage meter), I decided that I did a good job
. That was a week ago.
Today, I wanted to do some experiment with the batteries, so I first measured the voltage at the batteries. With the shore power on, it measured 13.3V (I thought "good! charger is indeed working.
") Then I removed the shore power and measured it again. It still measured 13.3V. I thought to myself what a great set of batteries I still have after 3 years
. (They are cheap 6V flooded acid golfcart batteries in series.)
Then I went inside the trailer, and nothing was working
. I thought Use/Store switch was somehow turned to Store, but that didn't do a thing. So I measured the voltage again at the batteries. To my astonishment, it measured 0.7V
. I put the shore power back on, and everything started to work again.I suspect having put an extra 30A fuse last week somehow has caused this. I looked at the instruction on the cover of the fuse board, which I should have last week in the first place, it says that the slot on the farthest right is used only with 50 and 70amp units. But how would putting an unnecessary extra fuse would do this? I confirmed the proper voltage at the batteries, so these batteries were being charged, no? Is it possible it was being charged and being drained at the same time because of the extra fuse? Also why would dead batteries measure 13V. Do batteries exhibit some residual voltage after being removed from the charging voltage?
Anyway, I've removed the third 30A fuse and been waiting if the batteries can be brought back to life. I think I need to wait for at least a few hours. If they are dead, no big deal. They were cheap and I was thinking of replacing them anyway.
Any comment would be appreciated.
Atsushi
Linear Mode
