Adventure with POS circuit breaker!

[TAKPAK]

Once a year, we do a "dry camp" event (military living hisory) at Fort Stevens state park in Oregon with our group. Take our 5'er with us. Used the generator (Yamaha 2400) most of the time. Last night, shut down the genny and prepared for bed. I was reading, the wife was "preparing" to bed down. Suddenly, the lights went out. Everything 12 volt died. As I looked for the flashlight, they suddenly came back on. 15 seconds later, out again. This happened 3 times, with flickering in between. Since it was ALL the 12 volt stuff, I figured it was that blankety blank famous (or infamous) main circuit breaker. Too dark to fix then, so used LED lanterns and went to bed. Next morning I bypassed the CB (wired around it) and no more problems for the time being. Headed for home! I had already switched the hydraulic pump over to an 80 amp CB earlier in the year, because of tripping problems. Thought without the heavy load, the OEM would be OK. NOPE!! Got home, tried to put out the bedroom slide, same on/off/on/off scenario again. There are two CB's in our unit. A 50 amp, and a 30 amp. 30 amp comes off the 50 amp in series with it. Turns out the bedroom slide was still going through the 50 amp defective CB. The bedroom slide as well as the hydraulics are now off the new 80 amp CB. I will be installing a 60 amp CB for the main breaker panel circuit. The bed slide and all the hydraulics now come off their own dedicated 80 amp CB, and everything else (lighter loads) be be off the 60 amp CB. In sorting everything out, I found several wires coming directly off the CB's that did NOT go through the main disconnect, nor the fuse panel. If anyone wants to know what, I'll list them later on. Other than that, it was a great weekend!!!

[Daryles]

This is as far as I got ID'ing those wires

Red self resetting circuit breaker 12v, 30A.
Regarding the 10 gauge wiring.
Blue: trailer brakes
Tan: tank heaters?
Purple: slides?
Red 1:
Red 2:
Red with inline 30A fuse: to solar MPPT

[TAKPAK]

Red 1: Power from trailer cord & plug/tow vehicle power (battery charging while on road).

Red 2: Power to Lippert level up controller on side of RV.

Purple is the slides, or rather to the control for the hydraulic slides (living room). Bedroom, being electric is separate.

I discovered too, that part of the problem with the "tripping" was that even though they had two separate circuit breakers, the 50 and the 30 amp ones, they had wired them in series instead of parallel, so that the 30 amp was drawing it's load through the 50 at the same time. Would have been MUCH better had they wired them in parallel and split the load!!! My new CB's are done that way now!

[firestation12]

FWIW, the red typing in a smaller font is not nearly as easy to read as the standard black.