[Dick]

Plugged into reliable shore power?

[Larry]

Yes. I have two reliable sources available, a 30amp and 50amp. I tried both with the same results. I also started up the generator to see what would happen. The same results – the DC amps increased to 55 on both legs on the power monitor. I shut it down immediately. I have a short video showing how the monitor panel reacts but am not sure how to share it here.

[Bill]

Could it be that with things on in the coach, A/C, water heaters any other current draw are on when the inverters kick in and the charge rates on them for the house batteries are set at something like 30 amps each, that you are drawing too much amperage from your power sources.

Are the house batteries up to charge.

[Roscoeapproved]

I’m guessing that Buddy could be on to something. He’s pretty sharp.

Have you tried turning EVERYTHING off they turning on the shore power. Slowly turn on one breaker at a time and see what the draw is.

Does you use a surge protector/power management device like a Progressive Industries that will show you what the amp draw is on each leg? If you do, watch the readout as someone turns on the breakers.

---

Jeff and Lindsay

91 Marathon XL

[Gary]

You said 55 DC amps and we assume you meant 55 AC amps. Turn the chargers off on your remotes along with all heavy AC loads and see what happens as others have said.

[Jim/Chris]

Thanks to all for the comments/suggestions.

I took the coach to a service center that has helped diagnose unrelated issues in the past. It took 45 minutes to get there. We could not duplicate the problem when we plugged the coach into a 50amp receptacle. The DC amps began to rise after plugging in but never reached the max as before. The inverters were charging the batteries.

Here is what we think happened:

I washed the coach in the morning and pulled it back into the garage. I always plug the coach into a 30amp outlet when parked, then I don’t have to worry about shutting down 120 volt circuits. This time I forgot to plug it in. When I realized this 8 hours later, i plugged it in to my 30amp outlet and that’s when the breaker popped. The batteries were drawn down to a point that the surge from the inverters to charge them back up was greater than the 30amp breaker would allow. At this point I panicked as we were planning to leave on an extended trip in the morning. I plugged the coach into a 50amp outlet and saw the same rise in DC amps on the remote panel as the inverters tried to charge the batteries. I manually shut down the circuit breaker to prevent damage. This was my first mistake. Had I left the circuit breaker alone, I now believe the inverters would have been able to charge the batteries and I would have been on my way. I also started up the generator to see if this made a difference. I prematurely shut down the generator when I experienced the same rise in amperage. Had I left the generator on, perhaps the inverters would have been able to charge the batteries.

We concluded that the 45 minute drive to the service facility allowed the alternator sufficient time to charge up the batteries and that is why we could not duplicate my earlier issues.

We are on our trip and all is well so far. Batteries are charged.

This experience has prompted some inverter-related questions. I believe our 2 Heart Interface Freedom 25 inverter/chargers are original to the coach. They have been very reliable for the past 20 years. But, what is the expected useful life of an inverter/charger? Do they begin to lose effectiveness/efficiency over time? Should I be thinking about replacing these units or wait until they fail? How would I know when it is time to replace them?

Looking forward to hearing from the experts (or those that have experienced inverter failure).

[Rudy]

We had an inverter fail in our 1999 Liberty in about 2017; 18 years old. We had too. I called Jeff Rowe and East Tennessee Luxury Coach who does all our maintenance and asked if we should try to get the failed on fixed, replace just the failed one, or replace the pair.

He asked some good questions. How long do you think an inverter/charger should last? How long will a fix on the dead on last? What happens if you fix the dead one, you’re on a long trip and you have another failure?

I replaced them both with new state of the art inverter/chargers. Not a cheap date. Now I’ve read that the “new” inverter/chargers might not be built quite as robust as the “old” ones. Not sure if that is accurate or not.

So many things about whether keep something going on a coach, fix a broken thing, or replace with new is a crap shoot.