Surge Protector

[Lil Joe]

Hope some electricians can jump in on this one. I’m currently plugged into shore power at 50 A. I had a surge protector hooked up. Came home one night and the lights were extremely dim and the battery showed empty. Lights started flickering and our air fryer was beeping and flickering. The 110 plugs all worked, tv etc. Went and bought a new battery and all worked well again. I had a tech check the next day and determined the converter was not working. No reading coming out. However when he touched the neutral bar in the fuse panel he received a shock. Tested the neutral and it was hot. Tested a coach 110 outlet plug and showed 245 volts. Tested the surge protector at a 110 outlet on the post and it was fine. Normal readings. Disconnected the surge protector and all was back to normal. No hot neutral and normal readings at coach 110 outlets. I’m now installing a new converter and not using the surge protector…at least not this one. Is this possible that a surge protector that reads good numbers could do this. Went through this a few days earlier but all went back to normal on its own, till it happened again. We also lost our microwave about two weeks ago and now I think it was related to this.
Any ideas.

[DutchmenSport]

Well, the first question that any of us will have for you is, what was the name / brand / model of your "surge protector"? How old was it? And when you had issues in the past, was it the same protector?

[jimcol]

Sounds to me like you are losing the neutral after the surge protector. You probably need to find the issue pretty quick or risk the potential of burning up all your electronics. I'd start by checking the lugs on your power cord and the inlet receptacle on your 5'er as well as the terminations at your power distribution panel. This isn't a problem I would ignore.

[Lil Joe]

Surge Guard Model 34850
120/249v 50amp

[jsb5717]

Sounds to me like the surge protector is faulty. If the issues exist while using it and all returns to normal when not, then that should be a pretty good indicator. It must have some kind of internal short to allow 245v in the coach.

An RV 50a shore power outlet will have two separate legs of 120v. Those 2 legs of power go into your RV breaker box on 2 separate 120v feeds. Everything in the coach runs on 120v...NEVER 240v. If the short power outlet is correctly wired then a short is allowing a cross-feed of current. It could be your cable, but it sounds like your surge protector.

Ideally you would install a quality EMS system.

[prndl]

I don't think it is your surge protector. There is an open neutral somewhere up stream of your converter. Probably in the cable/cable plugs/cable to coach connector.
It's somewhere that was moved or jiggled when you were connecting and disconnecting the surge protector and or shore line.
When you tested the 120V outlets and found 240V was that on just one leg of the outlet or are you adding what you found on each leg?

[Lil Joe]

Thanks for the replies. I’m going to invest in an EMS. The surge protector was about 8 years old. Apparently they’re only good for 2-3 years and no real way to check them. All normal at present. I do believe it was the 50 amp power cord where it attaches to the coach. It was not completely secured. And yes I was getting 240 V at each leg of the outlet. Scary!