Another Almost Catastrophic Failure!

[D2Reid]

I am commenting here not because I have knowledge or a solution to the problem, but solely so I will get auto updates on your discussion. I have had 2 burn out's because of shorts in Camco products so I am interested in gaining more knowledge.

[Cate&Rob]

I'm thinking that might be the reason SureGuard didn't trip, because it saw a neutral path because of the inverter.

Paul - I think this idea from Curtis is where we should look first. This could be why the SureGuard thinks there is a neutral but the circuits getting fried don't see the neutral that is not there because of problems at the post.

Rob

[Cate&Rob]

I am commenting here not because I have knowledge or a solution to the problem, but solely so I will get auto updates on your discussion. I have had 2 burn out's because of shorts in Camco products so I am interested in gaining more knowledge.

Dallas - a bit of a long read . . . but if you go back through the original discussion, linked to post #1, Curtis explains how losing the neutral can cause high voltage in an RV shorepower system that I always thought was safely divided into two 120V halfs.

Rob

[D2Reid]

Curtis explains how losing the neutral can cause high voltage Rob

Yup that's what happened, fortunately for me it melted the Camco plugs before it did any damage to my rv. The first one melted the female plug on my expensive Surgeguard. The Surgeguard nor the breaker tripped. Just a big white flash outside then no power. Long time ago I bought individual outlet surge protectors. A professor of elect engineering had recommended a particular Phillips protector. He said it had a sacrificial something or other that the others did not have. I placed them in all of the outlets.

Risk analysis says that out of the thousands of electrical posts we have plugged into there have been only a few that are bad. So the probability of something bad happening is pretty low. But it is possible, and it does happen. So I make some effort to get clean power, but I don't get crazy over it.

[lptxtandem]

IMHO - from your descriptions - my money is on the open neutral (intermittent) at the shore power connection. It sound like the neutral connection was bad or loose, but making enough contact to be intermittent. Probably an arcing connection.

If you can - get an electrician to turn the power off to the shore power receptacle and check the connections and the integrity of the receptacle.

On 120/240v systems. Open neutrals cause over-voltage conditions. The amount of over-voltage on each load is dependent on your connected loads.

With a good neutral connection you have 120v loads that are wired in parallel. With an open neutral you have 240 volt loads in series.

The voltage drop across each load would depend on the impedance of the loads.

Here's a couple of layman videos that try to explain it.
In the second video - I don't think he states the fact that the light bulbs are different wattage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsSlQnGCvdg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Q0M32puGY

[Paul & Deb]

Paul - I think this idea from Curtis is where we should look first. This could be why the SureGuard thinks there is a neutral but the circuits getting fried don't see the neutral that is not there because of problems at the post.

Rob

Rob, your help on this will be so awesome. Today, when we arrived at our next stop, I ended up having the same issue but I managed to shut the breaker before anything got overloaded.

BTW, I found another victim of my issue yesterday and my DISH receiver is no longer working. The outlet is functional as are the other items plugged in to it such as the Son blur-ay player, but the DISH receiver will not turn on and has no breaker or fuse so I assume it's FUBAR.

Anyway, I am currently running off 120 and as long as the temperatures remain down, I we will be fine until we arrive in Indiana and see if we can resolve this.

Today Jim and I did some more testing of my 50 amp cord because after I found my issue I tried his 50 amp cord and things seemed fine. I did this thinking maybe my original diagnosis of the Camco dogbone as the culprit may have been the main cord after all, but we did not find any issues. I still hold out that I may have an intermittent problem but I can't really figure out how to test that theory even with Deb and Ginnie shaking the cord as Jim and I tested the ends.

IMHO - from your descriptions - my money is on the open neutral (intermittent) at the shore power connection. It sound like the neutral connection was bad or loose, but making enough contact to be intermittent. Probably an arcing connection.

If you can - get an electrician to turn the power off to the shore power receptacle and check the connections and the integrity of the receptacle.

On 120/240v systems. Open neutrals cause over-voltage conditions. The amount of over-voltage on each load is dependent on your connected loads.

With a good neutral connection you have 120v loads that are wired in parallel. With an open neutral you have 240 volt loads in series.

The voltage drop across each load would depend on the impedance of the loads.

Here's a couple of layman videos that try to explain it.
In the second video - I don't think he states the fact that the light bulbs are different wattage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsSlQnGCvdg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Q0M32puGY

Thanks for those videos! They both made a lot of sense and I could see how this could be my problem but I always suspected an open neutral issue but i obviously haven't found exactly where that is happening (even though I previously thought I found it in the dogbone).

[Clsfly]

This is an obvious question but hidden things tend to get overlooked sometimes. Pull the twist lock plug and check terminals, may have a loose connection. On the other comment regarding the EMS, I went with the Progressive hard wired system and placed it close to the breaker inside. It then 'looks' back at all the cords/connections/plugs to find any problems. It has saved me several times from crappy electrical supply problems. Good luck finding your gremlin. See you guys in Goshen.

[Cate&Rob]

This is an obvious question but hidden things tend to get overlooked sometimes. Pull the twist lock plug and check terminals, may have a loose connection. On the other comment regarding the EMS, I went with the Progressive hard wired system and placed it close to the breaker inside. It then 'looks' back at all the cords/connections/plugs to find any problems. It has saved me several times from crappy electrical supply problems. Good luck finding your gremlin. See you guys in Goshen.

Hey Paul,

I know that way back on the previous thread, we talked about and I think you checked that the terminals on the coach side of the twist lock are tight . . . but this is a good reminder from Chuck . . . this is one of the first things to check. I am sure we can gather together enough ideas to solve this at the Rally. See you guys when you get here.

Rob

[Paul & Deb]

This is an obvious question but hidden things tend to get overlooked sometimes. Pull the twist lock plug and check terminals, may have a loose connection. On the other comment regarding the EMS, I went with the Progressive hard wired system and placed it close to the breaker inside. It then 'looks' back at all the cords/connections/plugs to find any problems. It has saved me several times from crappy electrical supply problems. Good luck finding your gremlin. See you guys in Goshen.

I haven't done this yet Chuck but I plan to tonight when arrive at our next stop. It's certainly possible but then coincidence would go off the scale because I replaced the cord AFTER the first incident last year. Could I have 2 very similar problems caused by 2 different reasons? I suppose so but man would that make me unlucky I'll report back later.

Hey Paul,

I know that way back on the previous thread, we talked about and I think you checked that the terminals on the coach side of the twist lock are tight . . . but this is a good reminder from Chuck . . . this is one of the first things to check. I am sure we can gather together enough ideas to solve this at the Rally. See you guys when you get here.

Rob

You're right, I not only checked this last time but I replaced the wire from the connector to the junction box where it connects to my automatic transfer switch. As I told Chuchk, I am going to check it later when we stop for the night.

Let's face it, my setup has a boat load potential weak points.

[lptxtandem]

Just throwing this out there...

If the open neutral is really the problem (and damaged electronics sure point this issue) - then you should still experience issues even when plugged into 30A service.

Not the 240v over-voltage issues, but your stuff would:
(1) not work if the neutral was completely open, or
(2) things would blip off/on if it were just a poor connection and intermittently open.

If your using all of the same equipment to connect to 30A shore power (just adding the adapter) and you never have problems - it might just be plain bad luck plugging into faulty shore power 50A receptacles!