Trace inverter going faulty

My 4-year-old Trace inverter has started playing up.... all seems OK on "tickover" (autosense), then when it senses a load it delivers it OK, but with such a huge current drain and loud humming noise that the battery voltage drops until it cuts out. (then restarts, cuts out etc )
I don't know where the excess current is going and haven't had the lid off yet - anybody have any idea what might be wrong?

Gemin@sprint.com wrote:

My 4-year-old Trace inverter has started playing up.... all seems OK on "tickover" (autosense), then when it senses a load it delivers it OK, but with such a huge current drain and loud humming noise that the battery voltage drops until it cuts out. (then restarts, cuts out etc )

You might get a bit more help if you told about the DC source and the AC load.

I don't know where the excess current is going and haven't had the lid off yet - anybody have any idea what might be wrong?

I think perhaps you haven't provided enough info for anyone to even make a reasonable guess...
-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

You wrote:

In article , gemin@sprint.com wrote:
On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:39:42 -0500, Morris Dovey <mrdovey@iedu.com wrote:
You might get a bit more help if you told about the DC source and the AC load.
sorry - its a 12vDC input - connected to 4 x 110Ah leisure batteries via 30A fuses (3 of these fuses have blown).
Output is 240vAC Load was a 60W lamp
on tickover, battery voltage was 12.8v; when this was load connected it went down to less than 10v within 10 seconds then cut out...
It has been working fine for 4 years, powering a circuit for my computers inside the house... no unusual events, accidents or incidents. The lamp was a test load, not far off the usual drain from my computer, 75W. The batteries seem OK :-)
Looks to "Me", that with 3 of the 4 30 Amp Fuses blown, that you only had one battery feeding the inverter, therefore it is not unlikely that you just sucked that single batteries voltage below the cutoff voltage of the inverter with the load applied.

A 60 watt bulb on an inverter won't be underpowered off a working battery (is that battery good?) with a 30 amp fuse.
The loud buzzing sounds like the inverter is sick or something is shorting it. I'm not sure how those trace units work, but you may have something very wrong with the transformer or whatever circuits run it. Bad wiring is possible too. can you run the inverter with just the bulb directly connected- no other runs in between it?

On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:39:42 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:

You might get a bit more help if you told about the DC source and the AC load.

sorry - its a 12vDC input - connected to 4 x 110Ah leisure batteries via 30A fuses (3 of these fuses have blown).
Output is 240vAC Load was a 60W lamp
on tickover, battery voltage was 12.8v; when this was load connected it went down to less than 10v within 10 seconds then cut out...
It has been working fine for 4 years, powering a circuit for my computers inside the house... no unusual events, accidents or incidents. The lamp was a test load, not far off the usual drain from my computer, 75W. The batteries seem OK :-)

In article , gemin@sprint.com wrote:

On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:39:42 -0500, Morris Dovey <mrdovey@iedu.com wrote:
You might get a bit more help if you told about the DC source and the AC load.
sorry - its a 12vDC input - connected to 4 x 110Ah leisure batteries via 30A fuses (3 of these fuses have blown).
Output is 240vAC Load was a 60W lamp
on tickover, battery voltage was 12.8v; when this was load connected it went down to less than 10v within 10 seconds then cut out...
It has been working fine for 4 years, powering a circuit for my computers inside the house... no unusual events, accidents or incidents. The lamp was a test load, not far off the usual drain from my computer, 75W. The batteries seem OK :-)

Looks to "Me", that with 3 of the 4 30 Amp Fuses blown, that you only had one battery feeding the inverter, therefore it is not unlikely that you just sucked that single batteries voltage below the cutoff voltage of the inverter with the load applied.
Replace the fuses so that ALL FOUR of the Batteries are online..... Charge ALL the Batteries to 13.6 VDC (a full float charge) Then try your experiment again and report what happens.

wrote in message On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:39:42 -0500, Morris Dovey wrote:

You might get a bit more help if you told about the DC source and the AC load.

sorry - its a 12vDC input - connected to 4 x 110Ah leisure batteries via 30A fuses (3 of these fuses have blown).
Output is 240vAC Load was a 60W lamp
on tickover, battery voltage was 12.8v; when this was load connected it went down to less than 10v within 10 seconds then cut out...
It has been working fine for 4 years, powering a circuit for my computers inside the house... no unusual events, accidents or incidents. The lamp was a test load, not far off the usual drain from my computer, 75W. The batteries seem OK :-)
How did you test the batteries? I'm guessing you have a dead cell in the battery you are using. (assuming that the inverter is only running from one of the batteries) It could also be a loose/dirty connections on your batteries.
If all 4 batteries were connected, fully charged and working it would it would take a load of "insert your best guess here"(I'm guessing around 2000A) to drop the V from 12.8V to less than 10V in less than 10 seconds. That's about 20000W, something would be getting very hot.

"stu" wrote in message

gemin@sprint.com> wrote in message On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:39:42 -0500, Morris Dovey <mrdovey@iedu.com wrote:
You might get a bit more help if you told about the DC source and the AC load.
sorry - its a 12vDC input - connected to 4 x 110Ah leisure batteries via 30A fuses (3 of these fuses have blown).
Output is 240vAC Load was a 60W lamp
on tickover, battery voltage was 12.8v; when this was load connected it went down to less than 10v within 10 seconds then cut out...
It has been working fine for 4 years, powering a circuit for my computers inside the house... no unusual events, accidents or incidents. The lamp was a test load, not far off the usual drain from my computer, 75W. The batteries seem OK :-)
How did you test the batteries? I'm guessing you have a dead cell in the battery you are using. (assuming that the inverter is only running from one of the batteries) It could also be a loose/dirty connections on your batteries.
If all 4 batteries were connected, fully charged and working it would it would take a load of "insert your best guess here"(I'm guessing around 2000A) to drop the V from 12.8V to less than 10V in less than 10 seconds. That's about 20000W, something would be getting very hot.

Suggest you clean all the terminals, both the batteries and the inverter connections. This will make sure it is not just a high resistance joint.