On 10 Oct 2008 at 13:21, RJ Kanary wrote:
BTW, the overall voltage is low. Charging would be a good idea.
I think it's at least as likely that he missed a battery. Five new, fully
charged batteries should measure 31.5 volts open circuit.
No offense to anybody, but I'm a wee bit uncomfortable with a couple of the
suggestions here. IMO, "Try something, then see if the fuse or CB opens
again" is less than healthy for the main disconnect switch. Each time you
close it with a short circuit present, you're asking the contacts to make
under full load.
Where a short circuit is involved, I think troubleshooting should be carried
out with power off. Trace the wiring against a diagram, visually inspect
for pinched or damaged wires, and use an ohmmeter or continuity tester to
find places where a circuit is completed and shouldn't be.
There are diagrams somewhere at elec-trac.org, no? (I don't seem to get on
well with that website and can't find anything their myself. I liked it
much better in the old days when it wasn't a forum. But I think others have
said the wiring diagrams are there. Somewhere.)
Someone with no electrical background is at a handicap, but an ET really
isn't that complicated. Very little electronics; other than the circuit
cards, it's 100% straight home-wiring-style electricity.
Electricity is like water in your house, and the wires are like pipes. You
can trace the wires like you follow pipes (if only they didn't go through
some places where they're hard to see, eh?). The "juice" has flow through
some kind of "magic box," such as a motor or light bulb, to produce useful
work. (The water equivalent is the flow-motor siren in a fire sprinkler
system. They still use those, no? Or an oscillating lawn sprinkler) If
the pipe is broken, the juice can't make it to where the work needs to be
done. If the pipe in gets connected to the pipe out before the magic box,
again nothing gets done and the ... uh ... fuse blows. (Oops, I just
exhausted the analogy.)
David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
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