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Inverter bay over heating
My first post on this new platform.
“Can of Worms” 04 H3 Liberty, Elegant Lady.
Question for the electrical techs. Please and thank you.
Inverter bay continues to overheat while driving. Life is good while parked (plugged in or not) and the bay stays cool. While on the road it gets hot as blazes. At first I thought it was the inverters over heating but while driving they are only putting out about 200 watts. I don’t think they know if we are driving or parked. On the other hand, the isolator works while we are driving. I’m thinking it is cooking the bay.
How do I test the isolator and how hot is it suppose to get?
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6 Replies
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On my Liberty, there is a small electrical fan which ventilates the compartment. I can’t recall what originally activated it; I have placed mine on a thermostatic control…the fan itself had failed.
1999 XLV X-6872, liberty #440 -
Mark, my isolator is just above the engine so if it gets hot I never was aware. Apparently heat is not going to affect it I hope.
To determine how hot it is getting drive a while and shoot the temps with the temp sensing gun, then after sitting a while, like overnight and shoot them again. All that isolator is supposed to do is to stop current flow from one battery bank or source from passing into another. That prevents one set of dead batteries from sucking the power out of the other set. On my Liberty one alternator charges house and chassis batteries, but draining power from one set will not discharge the other set.
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Thanks Jon, Inverter bay, inverters and isolator only get hot while driving. I don’t know if the isolator is getting hot when the engine is under load or if heat from the engine is radiating through the wall.
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Mark, I thought about the heat issue last night and I cannot explain why the isolator would get hot.
I don’t know your coach so I can only relate to mine. My isolator is nothing more than a one way valve. It lets electric flow only in one direction. Very little current flow should occur if the batteries are charged. If they are deeply discharged then the current flow amps up a lot so that would create heat.
You might want to not only measure temps, but use an ohm meter and verify current flow only in one direction. Other than that I got nothing, the story of my life.
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Jon, Thanks for your thoughts. I believe I figured it out today and all my equipment is operating correctly. The inverter bay is backed up to the fire wall of the engine bay. After stopping our drive today I immediately jumped out and checked the inverter bay. Nothing in the bay was hot. After sitting for 15 minutes and getting hooked up I checked again, it was hot as blazes. Heat is dissipating from the engine bay and the Victron’s don’t like. More ventilation is the answer.
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Another example of a problem the designers could have addressed if they had to live with and service the products they design. This is not a criticism of any one coach manufacturer but of them all in that with such limited production it is the customer that becomes the quality control department.
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