Breaker Panel & Air Conditioner Power

[bainer1290]

Have an older 77 Winnebago Elandan 29 foot class A Dodge chassis, just picked it a month ago, doing some things to get it ready to go. The breaker panel has 6 breakers, the three on the right don't have any power when I am plugged in. One of these happens to be the front Air Conditioner and I want it to be running for camping season.

There is an on-board gen-set but I am waiting for some parts so I can give it a tune-up before I get it going. It looks to me like there is a switch/relay in between the 3 left breakers and 3 right breakers that switches between shore power and the generator so maybe it is not working and that is why the left 3 breakers have power and the right 3 do not?

Anybody familiar with this setup?

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

The Elandon has only a 30A shore power cord, right?  I don't see how it could power both sides of that panel simultaneously anyway. I see 35 amps on one side and perhaps even more on the other.

What triggers that relay in the center? Is it a shore/generator (transfer) switch or something else?

 

[Ken & Sheila]

Bainer,

The center switch looks like the transfer switch between the gen and shore power.

BTW I see 2 breaker on the right and 4 (incl a double) on the left.

On the right I see the positive power wire that provides power to those breakers. With the power OFF, you might try to trace where this wire goes. I can't see the wire on the left, but you might try to trace this also. In some coaches one AC is only powered by the gen, but it is always the rear air. As Gary said some coaches have a switch to use to select which AC has power.

I guess there is a chance that the switch in the middle actually is a transfer switch between powering the front vs rear AC. If so it has to be activated by a switch somewhere in the coach.

Have you put a meter on the right side breaker to be sure there is no power?

In the end I think you are going to have to trace some of the wires to figure this out.


ken

 

[bainer1290]

It looks as though the shore power hooks into the left side and the generator hooks into the right. I tested the right side with a multimeter and no power when plugged in to shore, left side showed 115v. Left has 80A worth of breakers and right has 35A. I am able to get the front a/c to run if I move its breaker and white wire to the left side by removing one of the breakers already there. Why would there be 2 a/c units if only one can be used at a time, I could understand if the rv was huge but they are only 8 feet apart?

The generator is a Onan 5.0 kw, not sure on the shore power cord how can I tell the amperage of it?

There is no switch that I have come across to change power from the right breakers to left or vice-versa and I have played with everything in this rv. Anyone know how to test one of the transfer switches? It looks like there are actually 3 different parts, the switch, a round piece at the top with 2 wires, and maybe a relay with 4 wires.

 

[bainer1290]

Think I may have just found the answer, I took a closer look at the wiring diagram on the breaker panel cover, and it looks like shore power will only power the left breakers. If running on the generator it actually provides 2 legs of 120v, one for the right breakers, and one for the left (once it engages the transfer relay).

So looks like I will have to wait for the generator part to get it running to test my theory. Thanks for the input everyone.