— Guitar Riff Playing — Hi folks! This is Darren, with “My RV Works”! I
want to welcome you to another session with “Ten Minutes With An RV Tech!” This is an opportunity
we put out on our YouTube Channel, where folks with questions specific to their RV repair have
an opportunity to ask a real live technician for maybe some tips or tricks, or something like that.
Like, “What would Darren do?” Kind of stuff.
So, that's the nature of this. I don't have all the
answers, but it might help you. So, if you like this kind of content, you feel it might add value
to you, subscribe to our channel, click the bell. You'll get a notification, and certainly, share
it with your friends if you feel it might help them as well. So, without any further ado, let's
jump right into some of the questions that some of our followers have asked. Well, Byron’s got a
question. Now, Byron has an older Holiday Rambler Vacationer RV. It's a 1997. Now, he's had the
unit for three years, and he hasn't had a problem with any of his circuit breakers, but all of
a sudden, he's telling us in his question, the circuit breaker keeps tripping off every time he
tries to load that circuit. So Byron, what I want you to do (or anybody with these problems), let's
help to see if we can troubleshoot that with you. My first gut reaction is, you have a short to
ground, but we need to prove that.
We need to follow the trail. So, the first thing I
want you to do here… Dakota, I’ll trade you. I’ll give you my notes, and I’ll take the
meter. Thank you. Okay. So, what we need to do… Disconnect your coach from shore power, turn off
your generator, make the thing dead in the water. You can leave your battery connected,
but we want to take it off of the AC power. With the disconnector from the AC power, I
want you to take the wire that is attached to that circuit breaker when you take that wire off, okay?
Then, using your meter (I’m using a Fluke 325, but a Digital Multimeter), you're going to go into
Continuity Mode. Now… Am I in the shot, Dakota? Can you see my meter here? Okay. So… Continuity
Mode is going to be the beep, beep, beep. Or, it might even have the, the Omega (the
horseshoe looking deal). So, you're going to go in the beep, beep, beep mode, and you
can look down here… O.L.
Means, “open loop”, okay? And when you touch your two leads
together, you'll hear it beep. See that? Okay. Now, it's not enough just to hear it
beep. You also need to look at the display, okay? You look at the display
when you're touching it together. When the meter is in that mode, what I want you
to do is, I want you to take your red lead and touch it to the wire that you just took off that
circuit breaker. Now, all the power is off. You've unplugged it from everything, and the generator
is off, so… It's just a piece of wire right now. It's not energized.
When you take the red wire and
hold it on to that black wire (that you just took out of your breaker), and when you take the black
lead, and I want you to touch it to the neutral bus bar (and that's where all the white neutral
wires are screwed to), okay? And I want you to see if there's any continuity on your meter. It's
going to show zero Ohms, or there's going to be a value there (in a in a correct circuit it's gonna
still say, “O.L.”, open loop in a correct circuit) If you get a beep, or you get a value down
here, that means that the white wire and the black wire are touching somewhere.
Now,
a resistance value that's pretty high, depending on the number, that doesn't really
concern me. That might be induction going through a motor winding, or something like that, but
we usually don't find that too much in RVs. Um… Not too much, but it could… You get a very high
value, but if it shows “zero”, then you have a direct short where that black and that white wire
are touching each other (somewhere in the RV), but we're not done with our test yet. Still
holding the red lead on the black wire… Now, I want you to move your black
lead from the neutral to the ground. In an RV… Now, this is different from a house.
In an RV, your neutral and your ground should be totally separate.
They should not be bonded. Your
neutral underground should not be bonded in an RV. In a house, they are bonded. In an RV, they are
not bonded. Well, “Darren… Where does a bond take place?” The bond takes place back at the point of
origin of your electricity. If it's at your house, it’s your breaker box where they drive that
ground rod into the ground six feet. That's where the ground of the neutral get bonded. Not
in your RV. So, that's why I want you to test this on the black wire that you disconnected, and
then test it on the neutral.
Test on the ground if you get a value here, that shows continuity
that those wires are touching each other. You have a dead short. I have another
meter… I don't have it with me, because I’m not… Camping… Um… But, this is
my everyday carry. I go everywhere with this… Halfway joking! Um… Another meter is a Fluke. I
think it's a TS90. We'll make a link to that down below. Um… What that meter… I use that meter. I
will connect it to the the black and the white, for example, and it'll tell me how
far in wire distance that short is, okay? Now, one more thing to mention. A circuit
breaker… I had an Electrician explain this to me one time.
It makes perfect sense, so
I’ll share this with you, and then that'll be the end of this… My thought on this, but a
circuit breaker is designed to fail one time, okay? And you're like, “Wait a minute. I can
reset it as many times as I need to. Every time it trips! Well… That is a correct statement, but
let's say, I’m a manufacturer of circuit breakers, and I sell you a circuit breaker, and then
you… It trips.
At that point, my liability is done. I designed a circuit breaker, it was
exposed to too much current, and it tripped off. How do I know as a manufacturer what that circuit
breaker was exposed to that caused it to trip?? You may have damaged my circuit breaker, um… So,
yes, you could reset them all the times that you need to, but just as a little side note… If your
circuit breaker keeps re-tripping, you might want to replace your circuit breaker. They get weak
over time, and you may have fatigued a circuit breaker with it tripping as many times as it has,
okay? For the manufacturer, they only need to make sure it trips that first time. Uh… After that,
it's a nice thing that they add on to reset it. So, I want to share that with you. So,
take your wire off, check your continuity, and see if you have a short to ground, all
right? Thanks for your question, Byron! Our next question is coming from Rob, and it
involves his Air Conditioner.
Now, he states that when he turns his Air Conditioner on, the fan
blows, and the compressor tries to start, but when the compressor tries to start, it's tripping the
breaker, and he's getting a reading of 48 volts, which is kind of very low. It's 120 volts, not 48
volts, so he's already replaced both Capacitors, which was a good thing that I would have done
first also is check the capacitors, and but, he's already replaced the Capacitors and it's
doing the same exact thing. So, any suggestions, and so on… I did a refrigerat… um… A refrigerator
video! An Air Conditioner! Did I say refrigerator to start with?? I have Dyslexia guys,
and I get these things mixed up.
Trust me! I’m an RV technician! I’ll work on your
refrigerator… Oh wait! Air Conditioner! Okay! All right! Anyway! Air Conditioner… The thing up
on the roof. Keeps you cold. Um… Gain access to the Compressor. Screws up on the top.
So, you're gonna take the cover off, and you're gonna see this little cover. Take that
cover off, and you can see three little screws sticking up… Uh… Let me draw a picture, okay? Here
we go. So, when you get your um… Your Compressor… You're gonna have three screws sticking up,
and if you look carefully, it's gonna say, “S, C, and R”.
So, this is your
start, run, and common, okay? Now, you need to do your meter. You need to put your
meter in Continuity Mode, and you need to verify that you're going to get a reading between it.
So, there's a coil between start and common… There's a coil between run and common. So, what
I need you to do with your meter is, check the continuity between the S and the C, and write that
down. I’m going to come up with a number… Five, okay?? I don't even know if that's even close
to number, but for mathematical purposes, go with me on this, and then, I want you to take
your meter (this is on top of your compressor), and check it from the run and
the common, and let's say you get two, okay? Okay! So, in this one, you got a five.
This one, you got a two.
Then… I want you to take your meter, and go from start to run. Five plus
two equals … Uh… Dakota! What's five plus two?? Ninety-seven? Eighteen? Five plus two? Seven.
Seven! Okay! So… Seven. You add up your S and your R. Whatever that number is, you add your…
You add to that. You're running your common, and these two numbers. You add together, and what
you've just done is you've done a triangulational math puzzle. If this equals these two, then your
compressor is fine. The next thing you need to do… It doesn't matter the order you do this in, is
check each one of these screws. Make sure you get a good ground. Scrape, scrape some of the paint
off to get a good ground. See if they're short to the ground. It may be that your Compressor
is bad, but this is how I check the Compressor to see if the Compressor is good, okay? There's
also, uh… I don't remember if it's start, or run. You're gonna have this thing called…
Don't make me a liar… It's got initials… P.T.C.R.? P.T.R.C.?? Something like that.
Um…
When it's not running, you should have continuity between this. RV techs are going to rag me for
this, but it's either a P.T.C.R. or P.T.R.C. Something like that, but basically, it's going to
be on the blue wire. You want continuity between that. So, these are some things you could check
on your compressor (on your air conditioner). If it turns out that any of these tests
fail, I don't know of a solution to fix that in the field. You would be replacing your entire
Air Conditioner at that point, um, okay? Now, um… I got all these notes here. So, hopefully that helps you. If
it does, leave us a comment below, and thanks for watching! Well folks! That's all
the time I have for today to answer some of your questions, but feel free to leave comments below
if you have questions specific to your RV repair. If this was valuable to you,
give us a thumb up! Like, like it! Subscribe to our channel! Share it
with some friends! So, until our next session, this is Darren, with “My RV Works”!
Signing off.
See you on the next video! — Guitar Riff Playing –.
