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Old 10-12-2021, 10:52 AM   #21
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Well the user error was a very stupid beginner’s mistake.
While I was hooking up the wires, my wrench socket came off the handle and fell inside the unit. This model has a small opening at the end, where you secure both AC and DC wires. The AC was already secured, when I was trying to bolt down the DC negative, when this happened. I was trying to shake the socket out of it, not realizing that the shore power switch was on, so AC was alive. While the socket inside (socket is about 3-4 inches long) was moving around, something shortened and the unit went blank. As I said, the AC was still going through the wires, but DC circuit died.
I was also looking for something burned inside, but I could not see anything. I suspect, some part on a board went out, which prevents functioning. There are 3 fuses 150A on the top of each other at the wiring section, but after testing them they looked fine.
Extremely unlikely you will be able to fix it given what happened unless you can find a burnt component. This sounds like low level control circuitry was damaged and that won't be visible or repairable. One option is to try to find another 'dead' unit an swap boards until one of them starts working, if you can find another dead unit that is. You can search ebay for boards if they have a part number on them. I have repaired LCD TVs this way, there are scrappers that take electronics apart and put the guts on ebay, the trick is it needs to have some kind of part number to search on.
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Old 10-12-2021, 12:15 PM   #22
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Extremely unlikely you will be able to fix it given what happened unless you can find a burnt component. This sounds like low level control circuitry was damaged and that won't be visible or repairable. One option is to try to find another 'dead' unit an swap boards until one of them starts working, if you can find another dead unit that is. You can search ebay for boards if they have a part number on them. I have repaired LCD TVs this way, there are scrappers that take electronics apart and put the guts on ebay, the trick is it needs to have some kind of part number to search on.


Thanks for the great news! Lol
Anyway, I have nothing to loose. I will look into this swap method and who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.
I will need to buy another inverter and I did. It is just on back order.
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Old 10-12-2021, 03:21 PM   #23
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One circuit board component very easily fried from reverse polarity is diodes. And they can often be checked without removing from the circuit board. If there is nothing burned, and none of the capacitors have expanded, that is where I would focus my efforts. Between replacing diodes and capacitors, I have had pretty good success in bringing circuit boards back to life (at least those that didn't suffer water damage and didn't show visible burning -- and as to burning, don't just look, use your sense of smell, too).
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Old 10-12-2021, 03:29 PM   #24
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Sounds like you put 120V into the DC side. This will for sure blow the input capacitors (they are probably only rated for 25V for a 12V inverter). Take a close look at the caps on the DC input side. Any bulging? Measure resistance on the DC input side. Probably shorted. Remove the caps. Still shorted? Then probably also the input FETs. The caps are easy to replace, so are the input FETs/transistors if you are handy with the soldering iron. Of course, there could be additional damage.
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Old 10-12-2021, 06:07 PM   #25
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You have to decide if it's cheaper to buy another, or pay to ship.


Marine Repair & Maintenance, On-Board Marine Services- Bellingham WA Is in Blaine, Wa. on the spit or Bellingham.

www.s3maritime.com authorized repair center for Xantrex in Seattle near Salmon Bay.



https://www.marksnyderelectric.com/x...enter-landing/ San Diego


https://inverterservicecenter.com/ Back east somewhere but a Xantrex dealer.
https://www.emarineinc.com/categorie...Repair-Service Florida.
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Old 10-12-2021, 06:51 PM   #26
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Due to the shortage of employees and parts. I think it highly unlikely that you will be able to find anyone to work on it and if you do you will most likely find no parts available. Your best bet is probably to put it on ebay as is and hope some one else is desperately looking for parts and gladly buys your mistake.
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Old 10-12-2021, 07:06 PM   #27
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Due to the shortage of employees and parts. I think it highly unlikely that you will be able to find anyone to work on it and if you do you will most likely find no parts available. Your best bet is probably to put it on ebay as is and hope some one else is desperately looking for parts and gladly buys your mistake.
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Old 10-12-2021, 07:36 PM   #28
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Well the user error was a very stupid beginner’s mistake.
While I was hooking up the wires, my wrench socket came off the handle and fell inside the unit.
Do you think they owe you anything for destroying you own new unit?
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Old 10-12-2021, 09:50 PM   #29
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Do you think they owe you anything for destroying you own new unit?

??
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Old 10-12-2021, 10:52 PM   #30
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Do you think they owe you anything for destroying you own new unit?


You need read the thread from the beginning. This inverter is not the one which is being refunded. I have no claim on this one. I just hoped someone could fix it, because I could use this one, until I get the refund for the other one.
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Old 10-12-2021, 10:53 PM   #31
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Originally Posted by tiltrider1 View Post
Due to the shortage of employees and parts. I think it highly unlikely that you will be able to find anyone to work on it and if you do you will most likely find no parts available. Your best bet is probably to put it on ebay as is and hope some one else is desperately looking for parts and gladly buys your mistake.


Yes I might end up doing that.
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Old 10-12-2021, 10:54 PM   #32
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Originally Posted by Lepke View Post
You have to decide if it's cheaper to buy another, or pay to ship.


Marine Repair & Maintenance, On-Board Marine Services- Bellingham WA Is in Blaine, Wa. on the spit or Bellingham.

www.s3maritime.com authorized repair center for Xantrex in Seattle near Salmon Bay.



https://www.marksnyderelectric.com/x...enter-landing/ San Diego


https://inverterservicecenter.com/ Back east somewhere but a Xantrex dealer.
https://www.emarineinc.com/categorie...Repair-Service Florida.


I took it to Salmon bay one. The tech said, he could not start it. That was it. I still had to pay.
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Old 10-12-2021, 10:55 PM   #33
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Sounds like you put 120V into the DC side. This will for sure blow the input capacitors (they are probably only rated for 25V for a 12V inverter). Take a close look at the caps on the DC input side. Any bulging? Measure resistance on the DC input side. Probably shorted. Remove the caps. Still shorted? Then probably also the input FETs. The caps are easy to replace, so are the input FETs/transistors if you are handy with the soldering iron. Of course, there could be additional damage.


Yes I can handle soldering. Thanks for the help.
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Old 10-13-2021, 05:39 PM   #34
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Here we go.

The inverter has an input section that transforms 12V to an intermediate DC level typically 160V and an output section that takes that DC and transforms it to AC. Your problem is likely in the input section.

The input section is around where your two transformers are. Check the capacitors in this area for bulging. We'll do some checks without desoldering anything. Measure the resistance of the caps on the board. There will be some parasitic resistance but they should not be shorted. If all the caps are good it is time to move to the transistors.

There should be a row of FETs/transistors with heatsinks close to the input side. Each has three pins. Two of them (source and drain) have good sized copper traces going to them (they carry a lot of current). The other pin is the gate. Check resistance between the gate and the other two. It should not be shorted. Check resistance between the source and drain. Again should not be shorted. Do this for all FETs in the input side. If you find some that have different resistance than the rest, they are likely faulty and need to be replaced.

Next to each gate there should be a resistor. Measure all of them. Pay attention to the ones next to any suspect transistor. A shorted transistor can burn out the gate resistor. If you know how to read the color coding, you can compare to your measured values.

At this point you should have identified damaged caps (possibly), shorted transistors (pretty much a given) and bad gate resistors (possibly).

Once you get that far, we can figure out how to identify proper replacements.
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Old 10-13-2021, 06:09 PM   #35
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Here we go.

The inverter has an input part that transforms 12V to an intermediate DC level typically 160V and an output part that takes that DC and transforms it to AC. Your problem is likely in the input section.

The input section is around where your two transformers are. Check the capacitors in this area for bulging. We'll do some checks without desoldering anything. Measure the resistance of the caps on the board. There will be some parasitic resistance but they should not be shorted. If all the caps are good it is time to move to the transistors.

There should be a row of FETs/transistors with heatsinks close to the input side. Each has three pins. Two of them (source and drain) have good sized copper traces going to them (they carry a lot of current). The other pin is the gate. Check resistance between the gate and the other two. It should not be shorted. Check resistance between the source and drain. Again should not be shorted. Do this for all FETs in the input side. If you find some that have different resistance than the rest, they are likely faulty and need to be replaced.

Once you get that far, we can figure out how to identify a proper replacement.


Thank you so much. You guys are giving me great guidance. I will dive into this and maybe post some photos about the results. It might take a little for me to accomplish the one by one check, but I think it is worth it.
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Old 10-14-2021, 05:29 AM   #36
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"there are scrappers that take electronics apart and put the guts on ebay, "

How does one locate electronics scrappers?

I replaced a TV that still works and would prefer to see it scrapped rather than crushed in a landfill.
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Old 10-14-2021, 05:58 AM   #37
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Unfortunately, anything in the unit could be damaged with FOD. As we used to say... its now a brick. All inverters should be output protected with a fuse.
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Old 10-15-2021, 12:45 PM   #38
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Toss it and buy a real inverter. You will spend as much trying to repair at $125-$150/hr. Plus you won't be able to get replacement board, even if you wanted to.
Having installed hundreds of inverters, I agree with the above statement. Xantrex used to have a good product and support, but that was many years ago before they were purchased, and various different things changed hands. I would say about 50% of the time I do replacements, it is of a failed Xantrex inverter. Of those 50%, around half of them are modern Xantrex units that have been produced in the last 5 years or so, and the rest are really old units, some of which were really good when they were made, but have just exceeded their lifetime.

List of bulletproof inverters based on both personal use and installed units from customers include Outback, Magnum, and to a lesser extent Victron.
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Old 10-15-2021, 06:34 PM   #39
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The authorized repair places only repair at the board level and take a shotgun approach.
To get to board level repair requires an electronic technician but Xantrex does not provide service manuals, board layouts ect that allow one to work on it.
I have repaired several, one was an open transformer for the control circuit. It had corroded and using a microscope I was able to find the fault. The transformer company was interested in my finding and sent me a new one for testing. That fixed it. At $ 100 per hour it was over $ 500 to fix. I was lucky to find the problem.
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Old 10-15-2021, 07:25 PM   #40
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I took my Xantrax to S3 near Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle. At that time they had a tech that worked there a few days a week. It was originally installed incorrectly and had a bad board. When I installed it, it followed the instructions and it’s performed as it should for the last four years.
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