Mastervolt "MasterFault"

Warning to Mastervolt owners

Can Chargemasters become water makers?

My boat WAS fitted with two new Mastervolt 24/80 3 Chargemasters in late 2012.
They are bulkhead mounted in a full walk around engine room in our 70' Horizon motor yacht . The engine room is usually warm and dry. Although both failures have been over winter when the boat is not getting much use.

First Chargemaster failed exactly 12 months ago causing full tripping of shore power due to a dead short in the charger, the cause "corrosion" due to water entry...totally impossible in that engine room!

Mastervolt did not want to know and did nothing to help, I replaced with Victron. I knew I had a ticking time bomb with the second unit!

Now 12 months later, almost exactly the second one has failed, same problem BUT this time water was actually visible within the unit!

The theory is that the top mounted cooling fans fail and the charger somehow creates condensation that drips down through the unit and eventually causes a catastrophic failure in the unit and also causes potential fire risk.

I believe this is a serious, and expensive, failure with potentially disastrous outcomes. Major design fault.

Mastervolt will not acknowledge this problem.

My advise to anyone that has this range of chargers is to make sure the cooling fans are working or you are guaranteed to have trouble.

I am replacing the second unit with Victron now and that leaves me with only one small Mastervolt charger left that just does the genset batteries, having already replaced our Mastervolt inverter due to separate issues.


I know it sound weird but I or my sparkie cannot find any other cause of moisture.

Heat creating condensation in a dry environment?

Mr. 61. The laws of physics may be different down under...

It is winter down under and engine room is relatively cool, all I can tell you is that condensation collects on those units and you ignore it at your own peril.
Main engines have not been run for three months so everything is pretty cool down there so there you go.
FYI

john61ct said:

Heat creating condensation in a dry environment?

Click to expand...

yes, same constatation, look like humid engine room :lol:

If you have condensation in your engine room, you do not have a charger problem, you have a humidity problem. Put a dehumidifier in there.

Having just replaced a 100 amp victron centaur for a variety of reasons, we went with the mastervolt. You need to have at least 6" of airspace above the victron and 4" above the the mastervolt. If you had condensate developing over the master volt it will be worse on the victron. You need to dehumidify or better ventilate the installed space.