Is my converter shot?

[lloyd cicetti]

I posted a similar thread a week or so ago...but here goes again....I accidentally reversed the wiring on my trailer battery (Trillium 13ft) pos, to neg and neg to pos.
This knocked out everything but all the fuses were fine on the rig, including the pos. and neg. fuses on the battery. The battery is fine and takes a good charge after this happened. I hooked it up to shore power at home with and without the fuses in the RV and plugged it into a GFI outlet. Each time I plugged it in it tripped the
GFI immediately. Does that indicate my converter is shot?

Adice here is much appreciated....Lloyd in Columbus Ohio

[Jon Vermilye]

There are a number of appliances that can cause a GFCI to trip. While the converter is one of them, it can also be the refrigerator 120V electric heater element, or the same if you have an electric option on the hot water heater, even something as simple a a bit of water in a receptacle.

I'd try shutting off all the breakers first. If it doesn't trip, turn them on one at a time to find which is causing the problem.

If the GFCI trips with the breakers off, the problem is a neutral/ground fault, harder to find. To find a neutral/ground fault you need to disconnect the neutral of each circuit to test it. Some appliances can be unplugged which, of course disconnects the neutral, but others require digging into your breaker panel to remove the neutral wire from the neutral buss. This may be well beyond the amount of digging you want to do if you are "electrically challenged", but it is the only way to identify a fault between the neutral & ground. Rather than repeat the entire post here, I wrote one for troubleshooting GFCIs at the RV.net forum.

[Jared J]

First, when you originally did it, did you trip the gfi?

Second, have you tried another outlet, and if so, was it a gfi?

Personally, I hate gfi's with a passion. I keep them in the few places they need to be, and that's it. Every time one trips, I put a mark on it. After the third time, they get trashed. It's all downhill after that.

My first step in redneck troubleshooting would be to plug it into a normal outlet, and see if it trips the breaker.

If it's high current, or a motor load, I can't keep a gfi alive.