Houston, we have a prob..the inverter wants to kill me.

[Chris Patterson]

I know what you're thinking. Finally, there is a God. But it's not over yet, it only tried. Seriously man, I wired the wretched bedeviled thing straight to the battery, single on/off switch isolated, done. What could possibly go wrong. I turn on the switch, fine. Batt voltages dial up, plugged in a fluorescent trouble light, bam. Perfect. But wait. I touch the top of the case on the heatsinks, basically just to feel if it even warmed up, (which it shouldn't in that short of time), and that bugger shocked me man. Get this, my left hand is on the kitchen sink, shoot it's dry, hell I'm wirin', not washin' dishes. But the sink is not even grounded. No how, no way. Possibly moisture in the wood, who cares. And don't get me wrong, it wasn't like grabbing a 110v circuit bare handed, but bud you could feel the tingle. So of course I did it twice. (Smiling right now ain't ya?). I did.

Now man, this is stupid. I don't think I need to get into how I obsessed over JUST the right marine wire, connections, etc, we're still having fun with it on another thread. And I didn't continue that other thread about wiring it into the panel somehow or whatever, that's a Mars shot right now next to a failed moon shot..

So why did it shock me? And how many people out there want me to go back and touch it a few more times just to see how really bad it is? Really, you can say it.

Evidently this is the work of the devil. Unsure of where to proceed, and not really at that minute ready to touch it one more time, I found some kind of nasty looking candle inna locker that I think the crack heads left on here before I got it, and fashioned a crude cross out of some old sail battens and duct tape and left it against the helm. Not knowing any prayers good enough that I thought wouldn't pi** somebody off, either one deity or the other, no matter, I'm in no position to bargain, so I just quietly left.

What's the next step here? I'm afraid to go back right this second, I doubt it'll heal itself, but maybe the mini exorcism will have some effect. Maybe I oughta just yank the distrustful deceitful abomination back out, holding it by the ends of it's brand new wires, and with grace and form, fling it to the middle of the river? I can't say I was ever really going to use it anyway. It is more like having your trusty old .45 in the bottom of the tool bag. May never use it. But it sure is a fuzzy feeling knowing it's there.

And to add insults to insanities, I think I'm irritated at myself that I had an invitation from a friend of mine on his 62 foot motor vessel this evening. Steaks, automatic weapons, the classics. Boat so outrageous every time I leave it I go back in mine and spit in the floor; and declined the offer and sit here and type all this. What a nut..

 

[justsomeguy]

I love it all. The electricity, the wondering, the weaponry!

P.S.- And I've p1$$ed on my house.

 

[Stu Jackson]

Chris, there oughta be an emoticom for:

This thread is useless without a wiring diagram.

You dolt!

At least you're ending the old year with bang, AND a whimper!

Fancy that, who would have thunk it from you! :dance::dance::dance:

Happy New Year, you actually get to start over! :cussing:

PS - You did remember to turn off the shorepower, right?

 

[capta]

Kinda looks like an old unit. Assuming you've hooked it up correctly, grounded and all, it seems there's a short to the case.
If it is an older unit (second hand?) it may not be worth fixing? The newer square wave inverters are cheap enough, will run almost everything, and pretty reliable, since you've already got the wiring done.
If it carries current and it's on a boat, you should call it electrickery. The stories I could tell....

 

[kloudie1]

I agree.. Short to case of the unit or a "squeezed short" in the output wire.. .. If it is grounded into the system, it will consume a lot of zincs then bronze.. Get a buddy to pop the cover on the main unit and look.. if not there, then think about disconnecting the output wires and making sure ya don't have a "high ohmage short" in the wire run or on the connectors. oh .. I'd like to continue to read your posts, Chris.. so disconnect the inverter from the batteries before ya do any looking !!

EDIT: Here is a very similar unit's owner manual which may be of help.. Statpower was bought by Xantrex several years ago.
http://www.xantrex.com/documents/Power-Inverters/PROwatt/Prowatt 800(445-3025-01_rev_1).PDF

 

[justsomeguy]

Dang, I was so caught up in your prose, I missed the question!

It'd be great if Kloudy 1's solution works, but if not, yah, recycle the thing.

 

[Chris Patterson]

Ah, the responses I sorta expected, except from Stu whom I expected to advice to just keep touching it until it quit. Yeah, It is rambling in nature for sure and as usual, but the reason for the absence of the diagram, there really isn't one. That dratted thing just has connections for the running leads, which are marine 4 gauge wire, the very largest that will fit in the lugs, (and what the manufacturer suggested). And that is IT! Wow. Now, I put a single on/off battery switch on the positive wire to shut down the input power, but these wires go nowhere else but the unit. Some months back when I first acquired it, I sat it on the grill of the Suburban, (which also cranks off of a group 24 deep cycle battery, boat mechanics, go figure. The blasted thing died out on a dock awhile back, and in went the 24, I had it in the back of the truck), plugged a fan or something to it and it worked fine, and no fireworks. I took it from a decomm I did on a power boat, I looked at it as a kind of organ donor thing, and that's why I used it. I doubt I would have bought one outright, a Honda 2000 would probably serve me better, but there it was. For what it's worth, I threw away the full sized blow-up dolls I found, they were kinda moldy, and had dingy patches on them. (These things need CO2 cartridges on them, who has time to blow them up).

And there is no ground lug on the case. I could add it easily, and I wondered about the lack thereof. But being kinda leery of the voo-doo thing anyway, I thought there must be some reason for it, like the leaking current Cap mentioned eating away the underwater metals. From what I was feeling coming off of the case, I'm fairly sure that would occur, probably in short order. The resident witch-doctor was out last night getting liquored up again, and he seems to be doing a lot more of this lately, mostly after I have questioned him for awhile, go figure. And the paint man here is now unhappy with me after I offered to roll him around in the gravel last week over an indiscretion; some people are just too damn sensitive.

But no, power in, ground in, and a switch on positive, that's it. This thing bit me with no load on it, I had unplugged my little trouble light, it was just the closest thing to plug in. DOES sound like a zinc eater, doesn't it?

I hate to just incorporate this thing in as my new secret weapon, not enough amps to kill immediately, and a huge Tesla coil would be obvious. And nobody that knows me would willingly touch it anyway, others are not that stupid, just me. I think I'll rename it Kevorkian.

 

[justsomeguy]

snip-

I hate to just incorporate this thing in as my new secret weapon, not enough amps to kill immediately, and a huge Tesla coil would be obvious. And nobody that knows me would willingly touch it anyway, others are not that stupid, just me. I think I'll rename it Kevorkian.

A good man Jack, that doctor. I got to meet him in the produce section of one of Royal Oak's supermarkets, and shook his hand, thanking him.

And it's not just you. I've been known to enjoy recreational electricity, myself...

 

[Stretch]

RayMarine x5 autopilots were wired backwards you had to switch the leads, some factory in Hungary or somewhere...

One of my former employees was so sensitive to electricity he would get zapped from buildings, without touching an electric tool or cord. Working on the Roundhouse on Whistler Mountain at 6000 ft feet we were doubled over laughing some days as he could not contact the steel stud on the building without a good static zap. We could even static zap him by touching him sometimes...

Use that inverter to keep the deer out of the garden Chris

 

[Chris Patterson]

The situation is dire..

 

[Maine Sail]

#1 That unit is OLDER THAN GOD.... Possible it was thrown in the trash, or on eBay/Flea Bay (Same thing usually) because of its age alone or the defect? Statpower has been gone for at least 15-20 years after being absorbed by Xantrex. That particular unit was well before their last series of inverters and inverter chargers.

It is so old it is even lacking a GFCI outlet. I can't even recall a Statpower that did not have a GFCI outlet. Hell it even has an ungrounded two prong AC outlet. Those have been verboten for a very long while on inverters..... Truly Smithsonian material...... BTW these were one of the first series of Chinese built low cost inverters and there were a number of issues with them. You seem to have found one of them...

#2 Marine inverter, charger or inverter charger installations should ALWAYS incorporate a green case ground bonding wire from the metal case/frame of the inverter to the ships DC ground. This wire should be no smaller than 1 wire gauge below the DC + & - wires. So if you have 4GA pos & neg then you need, at a bare minimum, a 6 gauge bonding/Earth wire. I believe I mentioned this to you in the original thread when you asked about doing a proper or safe installation.

#3 A marine inverter installation should ALWAYS include an ANL or Class T fuse in the positive DC feed wire within 7" of the battery + post. I believe I also mentioned this to you in the original thread.

#4 The unit is simply defective allowing an internal AC short to the metallic case... Time to GET RID OF IT......

 

[The Garbone]

When I was a bit younger I was bench testing an HF transceiver that stopped functioning. I would turn it on and feel a slight tingle in my hand. Very odd. Turned out a power supply filter had gone south and was shorting 120vac to the case. My boots were helping me not do the shuffle.

My opinion is unless you want to geek out and try component level repair pitch it in the circle file.

 

[Chris Patterson]

Haaha. Yeah, that's what I need to hear. It hurt's my feelings not one iota to be called an idiot even in a roundabout way. I had for sure intended to ground it, but first post was minutes after the initial hooking up of the antique. There seemed to be NO provision to ground this beast, none at all. I did listen Maine, and was going to ground it, but that first "test" was alarming to say the very least. Adding a lug was for certain on the next day, but it never went that far. Even in my feeble mind though, I knew I had little intentions of putting 51 volts A.C. back into the grounding system, thereby creating some kind of weird doomsday device. The boat would probably glow.
I did take it from a Silverton that we decided to let return to the Earth from which it came, and the boat proper wasn't really in bad shape, it was just an ugly power boat, and well, it was a power boat. It DOES feel so good to smash up one of these water menaces. The intricacies of these oddball power apparatuses still elude me, a lot of this kind of stuff does. For YEARS I didn't trust these square wave abominations, and now the feeling is entrenched. Stuff like this bears no resemblance to the type of 'electronic' work that made me a couple bucks in my black-hearted career.

God keeps alive drunks and idiots. I quit drinking hoping to cut his work in half, and truly, I mean seriously, it is a miracle I'm alive. (Most were not so lucky, maybe it was simply the luck factor). One of my cohorts actually said I reminded him of the Brando character in a movie 'Apocalypse Now' where he was stomping around on the beach and bullets just whizzing around while he remained unscathed. I never watch anything like this at all, don't. But I did a little checking into that particular clip for the insight of his opinion. While it struck me as delusionally and insanely stupid, I think I got his drift. It was further agreed upon by others when I confronted him about this thinking, which no doubt would give anyone pause. All that says is, is it's just a reflection of my sanity I suppose. And it's actually quite troubling when I think back on it..

No matter. To the briney deeps it will go. (And no folks, I am not truly going to throw it in the water, I throw nothing overboard, ever.) I gotta admit, that small ungrounded two prong plug got my attention. It was like one of those 'What the hell?' kind of thoughts, and I disregarded it, thinking no way am I going to plug something into that! And one small matter in my defense, it wasn't near a complete install, more of a prototyping. But I had the stuff, and it seemed to be a good place to put it, I'm actually kind of bored of late. Not because the phone quit ringing, I just quit answering it.

But you've got to expect some failures. If yer not tearing something up now and then, yer not really doing much. The dangerous things aside, when I consider it for a minute, if someone ELSE had handed me that thing and requested me to put it on their boat, I would have refused. And I venture no one else will ever set foot on this boat again besides me. I'm so contentious nobody wants to be around me, and I do this purposefully. The wife has long had her interest now in something at or near 50 feet, probably bigger. She wouldn't say it out loud, but I think she regards my little Ericson as a day-dink. And I'm worth way more dead to others that remaining alive, so the disention is not much..

But I REALLY do appreciate all of you being rough on me. I can take that, even appreciate some people being a man about it and SAY it. My old man was quite a brilliant engineer, (which made me wonder why I looked so much like the mailman), and when I was very young bought a football parlay card. Knowing nothing about ANY kind of ballgame, and still do not, I actually fail to see the point, but I bet on these teams to win. I showed this card to my dad, of which he replied, and I will never forget, "Son, those are stupid bets". This may seem harsh, however, I have never bet on a dummass ball game again. Or even watched one. Valuable lesson that has served me well, not the least of which spared me endless hours hanging out with some other GUY, watching some moron throw a ball around. Priceless.

But I appreciate it Maine and the others. I'd like to think I'm not so thin-skinned as our current society, that will get offended for being called stupid, after doing something obviously stupid. One of my ultimate hero's Winston Churchill said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”

That made sense to me. Oh well. Plan B..

 

[WayneH]

I used to do dumb ass things in front of crowds. Now I avoid crowds.

http://www.despair.com/mistakes.html

 

[Scott T-Bird]

Got a brother?

Chris, it just dawned on me that you must have a brother up here in New Jersey who lives on an island in Lake Hopatcong (in the summer anyway). He needs a lot of space to separate himself from the neighbors ... and the neighbors seem to keep their distance. His dad also was a brilliant engineer back in the day. We came to be acquainted via our wives, who have a very longstanding friendship, otherwise it probably would have been reckless to try to get to know him.

I missed seeing my friend, Steve, over the past year, and now that you remind me of him, I miss his off-the-wall demeanor. Their regular house is nearby so it's a good time for a visit. Maybe you two are brothers from another mother, because I met his brother, who is basically more "normal".