Bob Cofer
Guru
Over the winter I installed a 100a Balmar Alternator, a Balmar MC-618 Regulator and upgraded the DC wiring system to 4/0 cables. Everything was working fine and the performance was outstanding.
Last weekend we went to take a cruise and our DC voltages were all over the place, from 12 to 18 volts. It looked like the regulator failed. Monday morning I called Balmar tech support and talked to Tim. We went through all of the troubleshooting steps for the regulator and alternator and were able to confirm the alternator was working correctly but the regulator was having random problems. Next we verified the battery sensor voltages and they appeared correct. Balmar is just south of us and Tim offered to replace the MC-618 if I would come down and pick it up.
I pulled the regulator out and headed down to their shop. Tim invited me to watch as he bench tested my regulator. He tested every parameter at both normal voltages and high and low extremes, we were unable to mimic the issues I had while installed. We talked at length about possible wiring issues but as my runs are all less than 3’ long with no splices it seemed unlikely that could be the issue. At this point I didn’t expect anything other than “good luck finding the problem”. Tim suggested that we still exchange my regulator for a new one and install it to see if the problem was solved.
I went back to Puffin and put the new regulator in, the issue was still there. At this point I was confident all of the hardware was not the issue so I decided to check all of the wiring. Voltages were all correct at both the source and connection points of each wire so the next step was to check continuity and resistance of each wire, all was correct except for the battery voltage sensing wire, it showed 17k ohms resistance which was odd as the wire is only 1.5 feet long. I pulled the fuse and checked both the incoming and outgoing wires, both showed no resistance. Reading across the fuse produced the 17k resistance. The fuse looked good visually and showed good voltage at the regulator connection but that resistance caused enough variation under load to make the regulator go into fault mode. My issue ended up being a bad fuse. After all of this I called Tim and offered to bring the regulator back and take my old one. He said, no keep the new one! He also added this record of troubleshooting to their database for future reference.
The moral of my post is Balmar is a quality company with great customer support. I am a happy customer.
Last weekend we went to take a cruise and our DC voltages were all over the place, from 12 to 18 volts. It looked like the regulator failed. Monday morning I called Balmar tech support and talked to Tim. We went through all of the troubleshooting steps for the regulator and alternator and were able to confirm the alternator was working correctly but the regulator was having random problems. Next we verified the battery sensor voltages and they appeared correct. Balmar is just south of us and Tim offered to replace the MC-618 if I would come down and pick it up.
I pulled the regulator out and headed down to their shop. Tim invited me to watch as he bench tested my regulator. He tested every parameter at both normal voltages and high and low extremes, we were unable to mimic the issues I had while installed. We talked at length about possible wiring issues but as my runs are all less than 3’ long with no splices it seemed unlikely that could be the issue. At this point I didn’t expect anything other than “good luck finding the problem”. Tim suggested that we still exchange my regulator for a new one and install it to see if the problem was solved.
I went back to Puffin and put the new regulator in, the issue was still there. At this point I was confident all of the hardware was not the issue so I decided to check all of the wiring. Voltages were all correct at both the source and connection points of each wire so the next step was to check continuity and resistance of each wire, all was correct except for the battery voltage sensing wire, it showed 17k ohms resistance which was odd as the wire is only 1.5 feet long. I pulled the fuse and checked both the incoming and outgoing wires, both showed no resistance. Reading across the fuse produced the 17k resistance. The fuse looked good visually and showed good voltage at the regulator connection but that resistance caused enough variation under load to make the regulator go into fault mode. My issue ended up being a bad fuse. After all of this I called Tim and offered to bring the regulator back and take my old one. He said, no keep the new one! He also added this record of troubleshooting to their database for future reference.
The moral of my post is Balmar is a quality company with great customer support. I am a happy customer.
