-C-
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2020
- Messages
- 15
A kid at the place where I used to work made up an extension cable with the wrong polarity at one end and blew 3 new inverters before he came to ask me what was going on. I ended up with the inverters and figured it was worth at least trying to get them going again.
I did some searching and found that there's a soldered fuse inside will likely blow if the inverter's wired with reverse polarity. Victron will repair this if you send the inverter back, no doubt at your cost. Two of them were their smallest 180 W inverter. Sending them back to The Netherlands from the UK would have undoubtedly been an uneconomic repair. The PCBs are fairly hard to remove so here's what I ended up doing that works well.
Firstly, here's a blown fuse:
As you can see, it's a standard automotive blade fuse, soldered in place.
Secondly, I removed the plastic housing of the fuse by nibbling it to bits with a pair of wire cutters, trying to leave its tabs in place as far as possible. It's tricky as the plastic is moulded through the holes in the tab. But if you persist with little nibbles, you'll get there:
I straightened out that twisted right hand one with a pair of pliers before moving on.
Thirdly, solder some female spade connector ends onto the blades of a same amperage fuse as the one that was blown:
Fourth- plug your new fuse onto the remaining tabs of the original fuse:
Lastly, enjoy your inverter working again : )
Disclaimer: be careful and if you try this, you're doing so at your own risk. It worked for me on 3 inverters, but may not always work.
I did some searching and found that there's a soldered fuse inside will likely blow if the inverter's wired with reverse polarity. Victron will repair this if you send the inverter back, no doubt at your cost. Two of them were their smallest 180 W inverter. Sending them back to The Netherlands from the UK would have undoubtedly been an uneconomic repair. The PCBs are fairly hard to remove so here's what I ended up doing that works well.
Firstly, here's a blown fuse:
As you can see, it's a standard automotive blade fuse, soldered in place.
Secondly, I removed the plastic housing of the fuse by nibbling it to bits with a pair of wire cutters, trying to leave its tabs in place as far as possible. It's tricky as the plastic is moulded through the holes in the tab. But if you persist with little nibbles, you'll get there:
I straightened out that twisted right hand one with a pair of pliers before moving on.
Thirdly, solder some female spade connector ends onto the blades of a same amperage fuse as the one that was blown:
Fourth- plug your new fuse onto the remaining tabs of the original fuse:
Lastly, enjoy your inverter working again : )
Disclaimer: be careful and if you try this, you're doing so at your own risk. It worked for me on 3 inverters, but may not always work.
