The batteries were almost completely dead. Their support line is actually staffed by the engineers who designed their products, so confidence was high when the guy told me the 7355’s converter had been discontinued, and the newer 55RU is the direct replacement.Ī couple of days later, the 55RU arrived, and just in the nick of time. I called Parallax support, which, by the way, was outstanding. I looked around online to see if I could find a replacement power converter and came-up empty. Replacing an RV Power Converter The converter is the lower section of the Parallax 7355 power center It’s our converter that needs to be replaced.
#5TH WHEEL POWER CONVERTER TV#
It inverts (increases) the low voltage (house) power up to high voltage AC, allowing you to run things like your TV or microwave off the batteries when you’re not connected to shore power.Īs is the case with many (most?) RVs, ours does not have an inverter.
On the other hand, an “inverter” does the opposite. When I started asking around among friends, I learned that a lot of folks don’t really understand the difference between an RV power “converter” and a power “inverter.”Ī “converter” c onverts the high voltage AC (shore power) coming into the RV, down to low voltage (DC) “house power.” In most cases, that converter also charges the (house) batteries. The Difference Between RV Inverters & Converters Next, I downloaded the troubleshooting guide for our power center (a Parallax 7355), and about two minutes later, confirmed with certainty, that arching I’d heard was the built-in power converter bidding us farewell.
The next day, I checked the batteries with my VOM, and sure enough, both were on death’s doorstep. I couldn’t really be certain, but I guess, yeah… A part of me thought they were dimmer, too. “Seemed dimmer” is a pretty subjective thing. Nothing blew-up! In fact, it seemed as if everything was back to normal.Ī couple of weeks later, though, as I was still cursing the Forest River engineers who’d designed this thing, certain that none had graduated top of their class, my wife pointed out that the house lights “seemed dimmer” than usual. We got the leak fixed, put a fan in front of the power center for a few hours, and crossed our fingers as I reconnected shore power. Wouldn’t it have made (a lot) more sense to put the water filter below the electric panel, maybe with a drip pan beneath it? So, when it began to drip, there was an immediate arching sound, and I raced outside to cut the shore power. You’d think that the manufacturer would have placed the filter below anything that could be damaged by water, since it’s all but guaranteed to leak at some point, but no… They installed it directly above the trailer’s Parallax 7355 power station. We didn’t even know it was there until it started to leak. The second thing I learned was that most RV makers don’t tend to hire the “best & brightest” engineers.Ĭase-in-point, our Forest River travel trailer had a completely useless water filter built-into the very back of an almost completely inaccessible bathroom cabinet (we use an external filter, so this was redundant). The first thing I learned when I became an RV owner was that pretty much everything will need to be repaired or replaced, and usually sooner, rather than later.
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