Mystery electrical system problem - not sure how to proceed.

Sunbeam · Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 7:42 pm Post subject:

Okay, here is a very crude drawing (which actually took me longer than it did to change the wiring Embarassed

). Hopefully it gives the idea.

One other change I made: I had more than 7" length of #6 positive battery cable between the house battery and the switch. ABYC calls for a fuse if the cable run is over 7". I understood why, and planned to figure out how to fit in a fuse. So when I was on the phone with Blue Sea the other day, I asked them some questions about it - basically I had an idea which fuse I was going to get, and just wanted their thoughts (since they know their product line and sometimes have a better idea). Well, they said that according to ABYC, if the cable is protected (loom, conduit), then it can be longer (I forget how long they said, but it was much longer than my run). So, I got some red protective plastic loom, and covered that section of cable completely. It was already in a protected location, but now it's up to "official" snuff.

AK Angler · Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:32 pm Post subject:

Here's a cleaned up version... I took the liberty to remove the ground wires, since they all go to a common buss. Let me know if you'd rather have them all showing.

Oh... and let me know if I got anything wrong...

Sunbeam · Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:46 pm Post subject:

Just a tad cleaner than mine Wink

I think it all looks accurate. Thanks!

AK Angler · Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:55 pm Post subject:

No problem. I'm glad I could help. Very Happy

Sunbeam · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:30 pm Post subject:

Just thought I would post a follow up here. To recap, we had an electrical "mystery" problem aboard last year on Powell. It was fairly tricky to figure out what it was (although I learned a lot while diagnosing so that was not all bad), but we eventually were pretty sure we figured out it was the practically new, Blue Sea ACR. It seemed that whenever the relay opened, it blew my main fuse (after you shut down, when the voltage gets to around 12.76, the relay opens to separate the house bank from the starting bank; this is when it would blow the fuse).

Blue Sea was fantastic about it. They could have used any number of excuses such as "this never happens," "are you sure your wiring isn't messed up," etc. But to their credit, after I explained what we had done and what was happening, they overnighted me a new one, and said I could either toss the problem one or they would pay for me to send it back so they could "saw it in half" to check it out. (We jury rigged things to finish out our trip on Powell; this was after we got back in.)

I opted for the latter and set it back to them because I was curious. They couldn't quite duplicate the problem, but did say it was very slow to combine, slower than it should be (although my problem was when it uncombined; nothing went awry when it combined).

We then put in the new ACR and forced it to "open" (uncombine) numerous times and the problem did not recur. But that was on the trailer.

Now I have been out on Powell for a week, and the problem has not happened again with the new ACR in and with "real" on-water usage. (It was pretty consistent before, by the end it was every time the ACR opened.) So I think it really was the ACR. Again, Blue Sea was exemplary in handling the problem. It's good to know how I can work around a failure (we stayed out two weeks after it failed last year), but also good to have solved the problem, and without any kind of "fight" with the company Thumbs Up