Recently bought a 1984 Westfalia Club Joker and decided to go traveling around Europe. Have used the electric hook-up briefly back home and seemed to work fine. However, now in Brittany on the start of our European tour and the interior circuit breaker kicks in after about 10 minutes and consequently we can't use the fridge or mains plug for long periods.
The fridge works fine when the circuit breaker hasn't activated and the black charging thing (apologies for my ignorance) under the bench seat appears to be working (it buzzes when on).
Any ideas on how to correct this and help get my beers to the desired temperature would be much appreciated.
Your supply has most probably got the polarity reversed - quite a common occurrence on Frog sites I am led to believe. You did remember to take a reversed polarity hook up adapter didn't you?
The Westy circuit breaker is actually an rcd as well, same as the ones in most houses but it will trip at 10milliamps of earth leakage current and not 30milliamps like in your house. It could be the fridge element breaking down or the charger causing this, try one thing at a time to narrow it down(does it trip if nothing is plugged in?)If not its probably the rcd part of the breaker failing, we get this happen a lot on brand new rcd's as well so at 20 odd years old it's doing well.
Thanks for your reply. Just tried what you suggested and turned the fridge to battery setting and unplugged my phone from the socket and it tripped again. The time it takes to trip varies from an hour to just a few minutes. What do you think is the most likely cause and is it something a local electrician in France could fix?
Did you make sure to actually "unplug" the fridge and the battery charger ?
A local electrician could test the wiring to check thats not faulty first then if it is the rcd unit its not to difficult to swap as long as you can find another double pole RCBO that will fit.
Ive disconnected mine in our Florida and fitted a separate board in the cupboard, then again i'm an electrician and we like to mess
Thanks Meridian911. I unplugged the fridge and it still happened. I've found that it switches off pretty much immediately when plugged in after a long drive and stays on longer when plugged in having used the lights and radio in the van. This leads me to believe that as you suggested the battery charger is probably faulty rather than the rcd. Are there any easy solutions to this or is a new charger the mostly likely option?
