2002 RK 17ft Hi lo silver, AC

Tried to put the AC on in the hi low. It would run for a few minutes then shut off. Could it be the circuit breaker? Or does it sound like the compressor? Thanks Deb

Deb, how are you powering your trailer? The battery and shore power ain't enough to run the AC.

AC issues

RCREYES said:

Deb, how are you powering your trailer? The battery and shore power ain't enough to run the AC.

Click to expand...

We have the camper in our driveway. The electric is hooked up to an extension cord that is plugged into our garage. It works great for a few minutes then all the power shuts off in the camper.

The air conditioner needs a lot of power. At a minimum, the circuit you are using to power the trailer needs to be rated at 20 Amps, and that may not be enough if the converter is also charging the trailer's battery and it definitely won't be enough if you are trying to run the refrigerator or hot water heater on AC power too.

However, I'm surprised the air conditioner shuts off before you pop a circuit breaker in the house circuitry. I would think it would overload the house circuit. I think the extension cord you are using is problematic too - even the heavy duty ones I've seen are rated for no more than 15 Amps. Possibly, the air conditioner has a low current/voltage sensor that shuts it down if it "sees" it is not getting enough power.

Does the extension cord get hot? Does it get hot at the plug ends? If so, it is being overloaded. A hot cord will have increased resistance too, that will reduce the power available to the air conditioner as it heats up.

- Jack

I do not think the extension cord gets hot but we can check it. I am assuming it is not a good idea to run it from the house current. Just want to be sure there are no issues before we take it out for the first time. We live in LV and it gets really hot here. We are supposed to take it out the first week in June. We havent camped since our kids were little, and we had a pop up no AC. This is all new to us. I do remember we had to get a special adapter when we had the pop up to plug into shore power. That was 30 yrs ago.

Yes, I know how hot it gets in Nevada (as well as Aridzona!) Your HiLo is designed to plug into a 30 Amp electrical supply at a full hookup campground and I suspect the lack of that Amperage at your home is the problem. You should not need an adapter at a full hookup campground, but I think you are using one at home? The trailer SHOULD have a 30 Amp plug on its shore power cord. If not, a prior owner has "modified" it.

I found, in the few times that we've stayed at full-hookup campgrounds, that things worked best if I ran the refrigerator and hot water heater on propane, instead of powering them electrically too. I found when the air conditioner turned on, it overloaded the 30 Amp circuit breaker at the campground if the refrigerator was also running on AC power. The refrigerator and hot water heater use so little propane, and are more efficient when run this way that I think it's the right way to do things.

- Jack

Check the breaker bus bar in the converter

I had a similar problem in my 2004 HiLo. It turned out to be a burned circuit breaker and burned bus bar in the converter. The bus bar as well as the main circuit breaker were badly burned and connected intermittently. You can see the results here:
http://www.thegoodes.net/2020/Lost-Maples-August/index.php. Note that some of these breakers make contact rather high up in the breaker (like the one that caused this problem). I found replacement breakers that had the contact area much lower which might have worked on the "bad" bus bar.

If you pull the main breaker and AC breaker and see this problem, you will need to replace the converter since parts for the Elixir converter are not available.

Good luck.