R-25 120V Panel tripping GFCI Outlet

Status
Not open for further replies.
B

bbrh842

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
351
Fluid Motion Model
C-248 C
Vessel Name
(2007) Tug O' War
The 120 volt electrical system on my R-25 works just fine when I am plugged into a 30 amp twist lock outlet, and it works just fine when I am running off the generator. However, if I use the adapter so I can plug the boat into a conventional GFCI outlet using an extension cord, the shore power GFCI trips the instant I turn on the main breaker on the 120 volt panel. This anomaly occurrs even though all the individual breakers on the 120 volt panel are in the off position. These symptoms tend to suggest the problem in not upstream or downstream from the 120 volt panel, but, in the panel itself. I engaged the services of a local marine surveyor to help me troubleshoot the problem. Here is what he found. On the back of the panel, there is a black wire attached to one terminal on the volt meter, and a white wire attached to the other terminal on the volt meter. These two wires clearly go to the hot and neutral bus bars and power the volt meter. Here is where it starts to get weird. On the same volt meter terminal to which the white wire is attached, there is also a second wire, which is black. This black wire disappears into the rats nest of wires and cables behind the 120 volt panel, so it is impossible to figure out to what it might be attached. In my experience it is a little unusual to see a black wire attached to a white wire since this will (usually) create a direct short which will shoot fire all over the place. So, the marine surveyor decided to unhook the extraneous black wire and tape off the end with electrical tape. Now everything works just hunkeedorree, meaning, the GFCI no longer trips when the main breaker is flipped to the on position. Also, everything on the boat that uses 120 volts still appears to be working normally, even with the mysterious black wire disconnected from the back of the volt meter. Soooooooooooooooo.........where does the black wire go, what is it connected to, what is the penalty for leaving it disconnected, and why is the black wire attached to a white wire?
 
I'd guess the extension cord doesn't allow the GFCI circuit to work. And disconnnecting the black wire disables the GFCI circuit in the vessel's circuit.

Gene
 
I can shed some light on this problem. My yacht club docks have 15 amp GFI protection and I have the same problem as you do. I'm okay if I plug into a 15 amp NON GFI circuit or a 30 amp circuit. When I plug into 15 amp, GFI protected, the green power lamp on my boats 110 volt panel lights, and regardless of whether the 110 circuits are on or off, as soon as I turn the boats master "on" the dock breaker trips off.

One electrician at our club feels that the cause is that the 12 volt and the 110 volt systems are grounded together. I discussed this with Andrew a year ago and I believe he thought there could be some truth to this. The solution, my electrician friend tells me, is to disconnect the two grounding systems from each other. I have been reluctant to do that.

So for 18 months at my dock, I am not plugged in. This is probably good -- helps reduce electrolosis and makes me take the boat out all the time to charge the batteries. I put an extension cord through the port hole to my heater and -- at this time of year -- Christmas lights. I'm out on my boat frequently (1 of every 4 days) so having my batteries run down is not a problem to me.

Fast forward to today. I was in a chandlery this afternoon and saw a book on marine electronics, and looked for GFI in the index, and found a page on this problem. It has something to do with the dual certification for US/Canada and Europe and the amount of milliamps that the GFI will allow before tripping (if I read and understant this correctly -- I'm not an electrician by any stretch of my imagination). Apparently US and ABYC standards are 0.0005 milliamps and European are 0.03 milliamps (if my memory is correct). So it MAY be the situation that both of us have breakers with very little wiggle room for a fault and we need to find breakers with a higher fault tolerance so that is doesn't trip all the time. The breaker I refer to is the SHORE POWER breaker, not the boat breaker. The article also commented on GFI breakers at individual locations (we have some GFI protected outlets on board) vs the whole boat being GFI protected. I'm fuzzy on that comment or the implications.

Maybe I should spend the $50 for the book!


I'm going to chase this down some more. Results will be posted here.

Hope this helps you. Anybody else.....???


Dave
"Lobo"
 
I have had this same problem with multiple GFI outlets. My electrician surmised that it is likely related to the battery charger. He said GFI measure the incoming and outgoing current and if it is off ever so little it will trip it.

I would love to discover that there is a fix to this but other than Marinas most outdoor outlets by code are GFI protected.

Come to think of it I tripped mine even with the battery charger circuit breaker on the panel in the off position.
 
Sounds like the problem is common. And there IS A FIX. As I mentioned, disconnect the black wire (the one attached to the same connection as the white wire) from the meter, and the problem is solved. My original question still remains, and I hope Ranger can answer it. WHAT DOES THE EXTRANEOUS BLACK WIRE GO TO ???? After disconnecting this wire, the problem is solved, AND, everything still seems to work. It appears the only thing the black wire does is blow out the GFCI.
 
I ordered a 30 milliamp GFI breaker today to replace the 5 milliamp one we have at our club docks.

It is a special order and I probably won't have it until sometime in January. And I sure hope it works -- it's so cheap! The good news is that financing is offered!

So hang in for a couple of weeks and see if this is the solution.

I looked out on Haro Straight a half-hour ago. Dead calm. Sunny, Warm. It looked so inviting. However this is the "wet coast" so within a half hour it'll be dark and spooky, windy and cold.

Dave
"Lobo"
 
I looked out on Haro Straight a half-hour ago. Dead calm. Sunny, Warm. It looked so inviting. However this is the "wet coast" so within a half hour it'll be dark and spooky, windy and cold.
Click to expand...

In USPS they taught us, "It's better to be at the dock wishing you were at sea, than to be at sea wishing you were at the dock."

Sure is tempting, though.

Cheers
 
I would imagine that black wire was a ground for the lighting circuit and shouldn't have been there. Here is my thought. Try turning your nav lights on and see if the panel still lights up. If it doesnt then that black wire should be connected direct to the back of the wires coming off of the Volt Meter light.
 
So I pulled the boat out of the water today and made my attempt to remove the electrical panel and volt meter. The darn foot rest is in the way of the lower left screw. So I had to use a smaller tool to remove the last screw. Then I could not get the panel to come out completely. Obviously it was put in before the foot rest was installed. I was able to remove the famous black wire after removing the volt meter from the panel. The Nav lights continue to light the panel with it off. I made the mistake of placing the same black wire onto the stud with the existing black wire. This blew the fuse for the volt meter. It obviously does not offer a reading. However it did eliminate tripping the GFI. All of the circuits work. My volt meter shows 112 volts at the outlets. After rereading Andrew's comment I see that he indicated attaching the famous black wire directly to the light for the volt meter. I will have to further investigate how to do this. 1 800 Andrew sounds in order.
 
Another theory I saw on an earlier thread is that the 12 volt system and 120 volt system share a common ground. I have not yet had a chance to check this out. If the theory is true, then the extraneous black wire PROBABLY goes to the ground side of the 12 volt meter. This would be easy to check out by pulling the 12 volt meter and looking at the back. If the extraneous black wire goes from the ground side of the 12 volt meter, to the neutral side of the 120 volt meter, then that means, when you are plugged into shore power, your batteries are grounded all the way back to shore thru the neutral bus in the 120 volt panel. This is probably a wonderful idea for reducing electrolysis ?????? and may be standard wiring dogma for boats, which worked just fine, until they invented GFCI's. Will the first person who figures out WHERE the black wire goes, please let the rest of us know.........thanks. Then the other thing still to be determined, what is the penalty for leaving the wire disconected???
 
The main reason that boat builders ground the 12volt circuit to the 120volt ground is to allow for a fault. If for some reason your dock or something on your 120 circuit is not grounded properly it will use the battery ground. This is a good idea and Ranger Tugs does do this on their current models.

I will look at a older model R25 on Wednesday and figure out what the black wire is.
 
The black wire, just as I suspected is the grounding wire that ties into the 12volt meter. This makes the ground connect for the backlighting on the meter. The one I looked at today was able to be cut and left alone. The guys had it grounded into the neutral circuit causing a GFI to break. If you experience this problem, I would cut that black wire and cap it off not allowing it to touch any other wires.
 
After reading Andrews' email I canceled the order for the 30 milliamp GFI breaker (over $200). I'll follow Andrews instructions and hope I solve the problem. It'll be about 2 weeks before I get at it. If anybody else does this, I would really appreciate hearing your outcome.

Dave
"Lobo"
 
Dave,

We did not have problems with the GFI popping, but we went through more Zincs than Canada has beer! Until AC suggested removing that little bugger. Now we do a zinc change about every 6 to 9 months. Not sure if it is the same , but it was a black wire that jumped AC to DC or vice versa, but you know what I mean! 😳 Happy New Year!

Drew
 
Lobo,

I started this thread and solved the problem by disconnecting the black wire from the neutral side of the 120 volt meter.
The GFCI no longer trips and everything continues to work normally.
According to Andrew, there is apparently no penalty for leaving the wire disconnected.

Suggesgion:
The 120 volt panel can be REALLY HARD to pull out far enough to disconned the wire from the back of the meter.
If I had it to do over again, I would pull the 12 volt meter instead, and disconnect the wire from the 12 volt meter.
As Andrew suggested, good idea to cut the fitting off the end of the wire, and replace with a wire cap, or, at least tape it up with electrical tape.

C.U.
Mike
 
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

After 18 months of trying to figure out my GFI problem, thanks to this thread I fixed it in about 15 minutes.

I managed to get to both ends of the wee black grounding line and disconnected it from both the 12V meter and the 110V panel -- much better than cutting. I now know why Ranger Tugs are so inexpensive -- no extra wire to play with -- just almost enough!

And it worked! And everything else seems to work, too.

Dave
"Lobo"
 
Gee, "Lobo", when did Rangers get to be inexpensive? 😱 The last time I inquired a full equipped R25 was around $190,000+. That's a lot for a boat started out a couple of years ago around $125,000, well equipped. Maybe I'm missing something. 🙂

Gene
 
What you are missing Gene is that the value of the dollar is dropping like a canvas back that just took an ounce of 7 1/2 birdshot in the side, while the price of materials that Ranger has to buy is rising like the next shuttle launch...

And only more of the same for the foreseeable future as long as this congress continues to tax and spend, spend, spend...

denny-o
 
denny-o,

Sorry about hijacking this thread. But, you're right. But, I try to avoid thinking about such things. :shock: We lived in Germany in the early 70s and experienced the exchange rate of 4 DM to the dollar changing to 2 DM to the dollar. 🙁 Our daughter has lived in Germany for the past 16 years. She's married to German who is a professor and she teaches English at the University, in the local public school system and to private students. We've made numerous trips as our granchildren were born and have again experienced the currency exchange rate changes. First, the DM was converted to the Euro. The exchange rate was 2 Euro to the dollar. The last time I checked the dollar had lost about 40% to the Euro. :cry: We've quit going there and bring them here. It's less expensive overall and good education for the children, besides we've seen most of what we'd like to see in Europe. I noticed this morning the airlines have increased the surcharge on international flights by $20, the total surcharge is now well in excess of $200, close to $300. Sixteen years ago, we were able to buy roundtrip tickets for just over $300 apiece. Inflation and devaluation are all around us, but don't show in overall official publications.

Gene
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

  • Tugnuts.com is the community hub for Ranger Tug, Cutwater, and Solara owners. Since its inception in 2008, the Tugnuts forum has grown into an active and thriving community of more than 9,000 members. It serves as both a meeting place for the best boating community online, and an invaluable archive of information.

  • User menu
Back
Top