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converter charger

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lamy

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Hi, I'm new on that site, I have a problem with my battery charger and I want to know what this piece is for. (I did an black arrow on the picture, to show you where thie piece is) One side of that piece is connected to the battery and it indicated 12 volt, and the other side come from the charger and it indicates only 9.9 volt.
thank you for your help.
 

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It's hard to tell from that picture. That metal can your arrow points to could be just about anything. Do you suspect that is part of the issue?
 
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Nowadays we call them capacitors... but seeing that it's marked "One side of that piece is connected to the battery and it indicated 12 volt, and the other side come from the charger and it indicates only 9.9 volt." Maybe not. Try bending the tabs at the top of the can and have a look-see inside.
 
That's a REALLY heavy bracket for a simple capacitor especially for 12 volts. Power caps for 12 volts are usually electrolytic which means round cylinders. What's on the other side of the board it's attached to? Large caps like that almost always have full specifications written on them. The frame is also riveted on which seems strange for a capacitor to me because they're usually a failure point and designed to be easy to remove.
 
ok thank you (sory I'm french and I don't talk very good in english)I gone try to open it.
 
Be gentle =)
 
I open the part and take a picture to show you.
 

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Shunt resistor.
 
Bi-metal strip?:confused:

That would be my guess, too. Heats up (too much current), bends the strip, breaks the contact, cools off, makes contact again, etc.

Ain't never seen one athem afore, I'm a-feared, but that's a mighty good guess.
 
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That is a bimetal automatic reset circuit breaker. Its the little thing that goes click when you overload your battery charger. The contacts usualy get crusty from being overloaded too many times and start to get a high enough resistance that they will then heat up high enough at low currents to trip themselves.
Go to your local auto parts store and buy a new one. they are only a few dollars.
new one tests at nearly zero ohms with a standard multimeter, Typicaly the have the amp rating stamped intothe side or the bottom. If not they are usualy rated at 2 times the continuous amp output of the charger.
 
Looks like a thermal circuit breaker. Normally, it has a very low resistance between the terminals. It is supposed to be self-resetting, i.e. when it cools down after an overload, the bi-metal leaf re-closes the contact points. If yours is permanently open, then it has gone bad and needs to be replaced. Travel-Trailer suppliers carry these in various current ratings (used for trailer lights and brakes).
 
Thermal breaker? All exposed like that? No wonder it doesn't work right. Clean the contacts. Or like tcmtech buy a new one, but it depends on what temperature it was rated for.
 
...I have a problem with my battery charger ...

btw-I have a similar power supply/charger in a 1994 Prowler Travel Trailer. I just bought this old trailer, and the first thing I found was that the 12V deep-cycle lead-acid batteries were badly sulphated. The charger is set to only 13.2V, which is about right for over-the-winter float charging, but is not high enough to recharge/equalize the batteries properly.

The correct recharge voltage after use would raise the battery voltage to 14.5V (+-correction for ambient temperature) until the charging current drops
to less than a few hundred mA, at which point the voltage drops down to the float charge voltage of 13.2V. Construction of a **broken link removed** for this trailer is high on my list of things to do.
 
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