Bruce
Forum Replies Created
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A little more to this saga. After having been told by the Hunter Douglas people that they would remove the electric motor from my blind they called me and changed their mind. They said my blind was too old to work on and more to the point they did not want to damage it. They gave me the name of another blind shop that might work on my blind. I visited the shop yesterday morning and they declined to work on it. So it was up to me to pull the electric motor out. It is a challenge to do but I managed to pull the electric motor out and in the process discovered the problem…..one of the leads had become disconnected hence the blind did not work. A quick solder repair and putting everything back together and I am happy to report all is fine. The trick to reassemble the motor is to ensure the gear housings at each end lines up and the two blind spindles are wound tight…not too tight but at least even with each other so that the blind is level and not crooked.
Here are some photos.
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Interested!
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If I interpreted your description of what is happening it sounds like the alternator is intermittent and your idea to check connections, etc. is a good one. The voltages and voltage drops you see would be exactly as I would expect as long as there was no charging. The discharge of 25 amps is not unusual and it indicates a load I would expect at 12V.
Any regulated charging current, whether it is from the alternator or inverters is going to be unaffected by charging from a second source. A regulator as the name implies controls how much charging current is applied to the batteries. So imagine you have a setting of 13.8V for the alternator and it is charging the batteries. Then you start the generator and the inverters have an initial charge rate of 14.4V and a float charge of 13.6V.
At that point the batteries are being bulk charged by inverters and the alternator is not doing any charging because its regulator is not seeing a voltage calling for a charge. Once the inverter bulk charge is satisfied it wants to go into float at 13.6V, and as the battery surface charge drops past 13.8V the alternator picks up the charging, and the inverter stops charging because its voltage requirement for float is being maintained.
There are a lot of conversions running the highways with generators running, inverters on, and the alternator(s) providing charging current all at the same time with no ill effects.