Almost burned up my generator!

[belfert]

The first day of my trip we kept tripping breakers while on generator power.  This is something new I had not seen before.  I did some investigation and the voltage was getting quite low which was leading to high amp draw.  I contacted Powertech support and they recommended a new regulator so I had one sent overnight to my next stop.

The next day the regulator arrived so I pulled out the generator to replace the regulator.  I opened the electrical box on top of the generator and noticed the wires going to the bus looked funny.  I touched one and the insulation fell off.  It was then that I realized the grounds and neutral were all loose and several grounds had simply burned off.  Luckily, I had the parts to fix everything up.  The voltage is much better now and I am not sure if I need to replace the regulator at all.

I was lucky the generator didn't burn up.

[TomC]

Because of vibration, you should be tightening electrical connections once a year.

[belfert]

I'll have to start checking all electrical connections yearly, but that is at least a full day and maybe a full weekend project.  I can easily think of over 100 connections to check and some of them will take more time to get to than to actually check the connections.