Problem with MEP-003a

[ctfjr]

So yesterday in the nor'easter we had here in CT the power went off. Yippee, I get to use the genset. All good, starts right up and I go back playing ham radio. Fast forward 30 minutes and the power goes out. Genset is stopped. I know there is plenty of fuel. I get a flashlight and start looking to see if I can find the problem. Sure enough I find it.

The eyelet connector from the battery negative wire to ground has broken off. It is affixed to the stud with a nut and lock washer and it neatly severed there (vibration?). I get a file to remove some of the paint on what is left of the connector with the plan to just slip it under the lock washer and have about 1/8" being held. I figured that if I could get it started that way I would put a small jumper wire between the negative battery terminal and ground so even if it fell off while running the jumper would be all that is necessary to carry the charging current. No love. Not a peep when I try starting it.

Plan B. I get a piece of bare #12 wire and connect it to the battery terminal and the stud. Nothing. Now I know there is something else going on. Sure enough I find the panel mounted circuit breaker popped. It will not reset so I open the panel and jump it. Everything is fine. Genset starts and of course the mains come back on right away.

Any idea what could have caused the breaker to fail? With the negative disconnected from ground is it possible something happened to the regulator circuit?

 

[dmetalmiki]

Perhaps the power surges or becomes unregulated, and that breaker prevented over voltage damage? If you had not 'fixed it' you can almost bet the power would have stayed out.

 

[Guyfang]

By regulator circuit, do you mean the 24 volt battery charging circuit?

Disconnect the ground wire at the battery. Will the CB2 close now? If not, the CB2 is bad. If it closes, then you have s short someplace. Also, is the battery charging meter working? Did you check the fuse if it isn't?

 

[ctfjr]

Thanks for the tips - good starting points

 

[ctfjr]

All's well that ends well! My son got a new lug for the stud end of the cable and put it on this afternoon. When I came home I reset the panel circuit breaker and it fired up perfectly. I'm guessing now that the reason it kept popping was that it never really cooled off when I kept trying to reset it and start the genset again the other day.

Not a minute to soon! We are in the middle of a serious nor'easter. There is about 15+ inches of snow on the ground along with countless trees all around me, including across the driveway. The power has been out for over 3 hours. The '003 runs our entire house just fine

 

[Chainbreaker]

I had the same thing happen to my -002 during a week long ice-storm outage over a year ago. The battery cable's ground lug broke off and just left the battery lead flailing in the wind. I had just gone outside to do a quick look over check of my unit while it was powering the house when I noticed it and immediately shut it down. Fortunately, I had a spare battery cable and was only down for a few minutes w/o power to the house.

So lesson I learned... add a set of spare battery cables and/or lugs with extra cable (build your own) to your "spares kit" just in case you ever need to make a quick battery lead repair while fighting the effects of mother nature gone bad!