Sometimes the manual doesn't have all the answers

[Summerpaws]

I have been faithfully reading this forum on a daily basis. You never know what tidbits you can pick up. My 802 has been flawless for over a year now. I've had 2 short outages in that time and it performed exactly as it should. I exercise it once a month using a 240 volt heater. I run it at 5000 watts for an hour. It's been exercised like this since I bought it. Never an issue. Today I walked by it while it was running and saw a red light. Overload. Obviously not an overload as the only load was the heater drawing 5000 watts. I reset S5 and reloaded it and it lasted all of 30 seconds before it tripped the overload. I was watching it and saw no abnormalities. So, I hit the TM's. I read on how to test K8, the overload/short circuit relay. I was planning on doing that tomorrow. Just for the heck of it, I decided to do a quick search on the forum for overload trips and I found a thread titled power output issues. In that thread there was a reply by kloppk where he explained how K8 works and then a very possible cause. Ray70 explained this on a related thread as well. So, this weekend I will Deoxit the heck out of the selector switch and the AM/VM switch and see what happens. I'll bet that it!

Thank you all for the wealth of knowledge. I'm retired from a power plant and can't get generators out of my blood.

 

[Ray70]

The TM will point you in the right direction, but nothing beats the wealth of hands on knowledge available on this amazing site!
Good luck, clean and exercise the switches and test it again!

 

[Summerpaws]

The TM will point you in the right direction, but nothing beats the wealth of hands on knowledge available on this amazing site!
Good luck, clean and exercise the switches and test it again!

I agree. I was all set to do the test outlined in the TM but then I read the forum. I'm pretty sure this is the cause. It will run at 4000 watts for ever. Only when the load goes up does it trip the overload. Sounds like dirty contacts to me.. K8 looks like a sealed unit and the fact that it will take a 4K load and not trip kinda sounds like a connection rather than component failure. I live 1/4 mile from the ocean so I'm sure the air is salty when there's a sea breeze. Perfect for corrosion. I have a graduation party for my grandson tomorrow so I will try the fix on Sunday.