Freedom 20 inverter/charger died after 16 yrs! Suggestions on replacements?

Maine Sail · Jan 16, 2019

Magnum or Victron... The Magnum will be a closer fit to the old Freedom..

Justin_NSA · Jan 16, 2019

I have the same unit. It came with the boat we bought a few years back. It was trouble free for the PO but tripped our undersized 20a shore power from the day we brought it to our marina. I have tried to sell it on CL. Anyway, I replaced it with a Sterling ProCharge 40.
I would go with what Main recommends.

Justin_NSA · Jan 16, 2019

It was easy enough for me to pull the old remote cable and run the new one. You could ping your cable or look it up in the manual to see if it might be compatible with the new one. It might void the warranty though.

Ron20324 · Jan 16, 2019

discovery said:
,,,, will the telephone cable connection that my old one uses work on the magnum? .

Sometimes you'll see a 4-conductor plug, like on your home phne. Sometimes a 6, but only 4 are actually wired. Then, YMMV, but maybe a 6 plug and six wired needed in your application.

Stu Jackson · Jan 16, 2019

discovery said:
will have to buy a new remote panel, will the telephone cable connection that my old one uses work on the magnum?

Only way to know for sure is to contact Magnum. I think that this would be a question that is often asked of them. Good luck. I have a Freedom 15 using a Link 2000 to control it.

Wanderwind · Jan 16, 2019

Here's a document about replacing Xantrex Freedom inverter/chargers with Magnum:
http://www.magnum-dimensions.com/sites/default/files/MagArchive/freedom-to-magnum-rev-bob.pdf

Stu Jackson · Jan 17, 2019

Wanderwind's post and the pdf file should have been most helpful to you. I looked at it.

discovery said:
What do you think "all magnums come with temp sensor that will need to be replaced?

You call Magnum and ask, like earlier suggested, and/or you go read more, just like the pdf says to:
Additional product information featured in Magnum | Dimensions product manual
Why is this not clear to you?

discovery said:
Also my unit is a freedom 20 not a 458,

The way I read the comparison chart is that the second number after 458 is the number you need, i.e., 458-20. You have a Freedom 20.

discovery said:
and it has a echo charger input

Either do more sleuthing at Magnum, call them, or figure you'll need to add one. We should not make any assumptions that you know what they are, so here:
What are ACRs, Combiners & Echo Chargers? (by Maine Sail) [scroll to the top]
http://forums.catalina.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?p=742417 and http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,9404.msg70131.html#msg70131
and
Echo Charger Use Warning from Maine Sail: http://www.sailnet.com/forums/electrical-systems/72295-xantrex-echo-charger-rant.html

discovery said:
Also my xantrex has a telephone connect that's next to the remote that says temp sensor.

Is there a question here?

Don Lucas · Jan 17, 2019

discovery said:
The xantrex freedom 20 2000 watt inverter charger died on us after 16 years of trouble free service. Our 2002 Passage 456 has a limited space for replacement so I was considering the xantrex 458 or the newer saw series 2000 watt replacements. Anyone replaced theirs recently. Would like a drop in replacement if possible and I assume the remote controller at the nav station would work with either the 458 or the newer pure sine wave models. Never had a issue with this unit regarding ac appliances so not sure a pure sine wave makes a difference to us. But now the time to upgrade if it's really better . Looking for ideas ?

They all are pretty much a "drop in". Last year I replaced my Freedom 2000 with a ProMariner 2000 pure sine wave unit. I did it to get a battery charge profile that matched my batteries better and to get a pure sine wave inverter as my microwave didn't like my Freedom.

For the old Freedom remote I got a standard house wooden light switch and cut it out as needed for the ProMariner remote and the switch cover the Freedom cutout, Then I stained it to match the teak the remote was mounted onb

artboas · Jan 17, 2019

discovery said:
The xantrex freedom 20 2000 watt inverter charger died on us after 16 years of trouble free service. Our 2002 Passage 456 has a limited space for replacement so I was considering the xantrex 458 or the newer saw series 2000 watt replacements. Anyone replaced theirs recently. Would like a drop in replacement if possible and I assume the remote controller at the nav station would work with either the 458 or the newer pure sine wave models. Never had a issue with this unit regarding ac appliances so not sure a pure sine wave makes a difference to us. But now the time to upgrade if it's really better . Looking for ideas ?

Ok,

This is a very simple answer
Go with the Magnum
Excellent unit
First class customer service
There is no other reasonable option.
I have never seen a negative report on Magnum, and mine works flawlessly.

Maine Sail · Jan 25, 2019

discovery said:
Hi Maine sail,
Still grappling with the inverter charger replacement decision, since I’ve decided to have it shipped to st Thomas we still have a month, since we got 17 years out of the Xantrex and since it appears the magnum will require the extra cost of a new remote and the hassle of fishing a new cable across the boat to the nav station I’m inclined to go with the freedom 458 modified sine. It’s 500 bucks more to get pure sine with either magnum or Xantrex and all our boat stuff has worked fine on modified for 17 years.
The magnum will cost 150 bucks additional due to the need for a new remote. I haven’t yet learned enough to see the value in the different brand or the upgrade to pure sine. But... I don’t want to look back a see I missed something. So maybe to can help me understand the value in the upgrade or the move to magnum from Xantrex. Understand magnum is better on customer service, but honestly after 17 years of never a problem I wonder how important that’s going to be?

You get what you pay for. Old Xantrex is not the current Xantrex. The last Xantrex inverter/charger we installed, at the customers insistance (he bought it), has been nothing but a big nightmare for him. I would post a video but I am pretty angry in it and my frustration & language is not a pretty sight. Xantrex has been promissing a fix for this unit now for three years and failed to deliver on numerous promisses. The unit is still not working correctly because Xantrex has failed to supply the fix. This is one reason why we no longer install them. We sure are glad we had the owner sign an agreement that this product was installed against our advisement, supplied by him, and that any Xantrex warranty issues were to be billed at our normal hourly rate. "But my boat builder installed it and they know what they are doing, so I need and identical replacement." was his thought process. He now pays a lot closer attention when we recommend for or advise against a product.

As a business we can't stand behind Xantrex, we can't afford to, so we no longer install it. Being in the industry I can reach out to many colleagues who do still install Xantrex and they have continually supported why we don't. The only Xantrex products we will install are the Echo Charger, the LinkLite and LinkPro battery monitors but today those installs are far and few between as there are much better options out there now.

I have given you my professional opinion, and given it as a professional ABYC marine electrician. It is all based on actual experience across many hundreds of boats & a multitude of problems with recent Xantrex products.

Beyond that the 458 is an RV inverter. It is not a marine product and is not marine compliant nor is it tested to the Marine UL standards. In order to compete better in the RV market they dropped a lot of important stuff off that unit (cheapened it) such as conformal coating, steel vs. aluminum internal components etc. etc.... The old Xantrex unit you had was a hold over from the high-quality Heart Interface/Trace days and they were solid products. After the Xantrex buyout customer service and reliability went steadily downhill.

All I can say is do an extensive google search on poor Xantrex customer support & quality and decide for yourself. If you came to us with a 458 (ignoring brand here), and asked us to install on a boat, the answer would be sorry we can't do that..

Rick D · Jan 25, 2019

Thanks for the heads-up on that. Some day I will have to replace mine. Makes the decision easy.

fireman331 · Jan 28, 2019

I just replaced the xantrex freedom 2000 with a freedom 3000 on my 2000 456, it fit right in the small space. I had to replace the controller but it plugged in using the same wireing it was an easy replacement. It took more time to take Boat apart to the old one out.

Rick D · Jan 28, 2019

I asked the following question and received a reply from Magnum and am posting it in case anyone else has the same question. Honestly, however, I have never known anyone else to use the Freedom Power Share feature as much as we do:

I have a Freedom 2500 inverter/charger aboard my boat.

When using a portable Honda 2000 inverter generator to recharge my batteries, I set the "Power Share" feature to 20 amps AC input so as not to trip the generator breaker which it will do otherwise.

If I replace this unit with a MS2000, will I still have a power-share feature or is it mimicked in another application? A fast scan of material didn't make this obvious.
Rick

With our ME-RC remote the setting for AC input will be called SHORE. Change this setting for lower ac input amperage to reduce current for charger and give amperage priority to loads.
The Honda 2K can provide about 16 amps AC so set the shore to 15 amps. The MS2000 will use up to 15 amps ac to provide 100 amps dc so the charge rate can also be lowered with this small generator. I would set my shore to 10 amps and charge rate at 70% to provide 70 amps dc current when bulk charging or for faster charging 15 amps shore – 80% charge rate for 80 amps charging during bulk.