UPGRADING THE MAGNETEK 63XX CONVERTER TO AN INTELLIPOWER 9145

I recommend that you read through this whole thing while sitting in the RV, in front of the Magnetek with both the front panel removed, and the ac circuit breaker panel cover removed, so that you can locate the wires in advance of actually turning off the power and jumping right in.

Disconnect AC power and the negative battery cable before actually starting the upgrade.  If you're just running a "recon" for now to get the "lay of the land", you can leave the power on just keep your fingers out of the ac breaker compartment since there's 115 volts in there.

MECHANICAL REMOVAL

Remove the four screws holding the lower half of the front panel on, and set it aside.

You will see four more screws, two on each side, securing the converter/charger chassis to lower part of the the main chassis, remove these.  This may not apply to yours, but mine also had an additional fifth screw, not visible, on the left side that I had to remove.  To get to this screw, you will have to remove the woodscrews that secure the entire load center to the cabinetry, and pull it out about two or three inches and you should be able to see the "offending" screw and remove it.

With these 4 (or 5), screws removed, verify that the smaller converter/charger chassis can be pulled out of the main chassis, and that nothing else is holding it.  It should slide out like a drawer, but will still be held in place by 5 wires, so you won't be able to pull it all the way out just yet.

Once you are satisfied that it has been mechanically freed up, and there are no more "hidden" screws holding it, you can push the whole main chassis back into the cabinet and replace the woodscrews.  The hidden screw that you removed from the side will not be reused.

Here is the schematic of the Magnetek (converter/charger section only) for reference. This does not include the AC and DC power distribution which can be found at http://home.comcast.net/~rabarber/magnetek3.htm

THE ELECTRICAL STUFF

The wiring consists of only 5 wires:  Two AC supply wires that provide 115 volts ac to the converter, and two for DC output or plus, and one for DC ground or minus.

REMOVAL OF THE 2 AC SUPPLY WIRES

The following two wires are shown on the left-hand side of the schematic above.

First, to remove the AC supply wires, remove the cover plate from the ac circuit breakers.  Look in the converter (bottom) chassis, on the left hand side and you will see a black wire (ac hot), and a white wire (ac neutral).  The black wire will run up and into the circuit breaker compartment directly above, and connect to the terminal screw on the bottom of one of the ac circuit breakers.  This breaker, as in my case, may be shared with another wire that will feed another ac circuit, so you need to make sure that you leave that wire in place, and remove only the wire that runs to the converter chassis.  After removing the black wire from the breaker, temporarily retighten the screw to hold the other wire (if any) in place.  Make note of which breaker the black wire came from because you will be connecting the black wire from the new converter here.

Now find the white wire that follows a similar path from the converter up and into the circuit breaker compartment.  This one will run to one of two buss bars inside the compartment, and will be secured by a set-screw, and it should be populated by several other white wires, each with their own set screw (this is the ac neutral buss).  Loosen the screw, and remove this wire.  Don't worry about which particular screw terminal it came from, they are all electrically the same.  (The other buss bar that you see is the ground buss, and will be populated by either green and/or bare copper wires, and we won't be disconnecting anything here, but we will be connecting a green wire from the new converter to this buss later.)

Now that the black wire is disconnected from the breaker, and the white wire is disconnected from the buss, pull the wires out of the breaker compartment and down into the converter chassis to get them out of the way.

REMOVAL OF THE 3 DC WIRES

These three wires are shown in the schematic above on the right-hand side.

Look in the bottom of the converter chassis on the right-hand side, and you will see a relay that will have a blue wire, a red wire, and a white wire.  The white wire, is not connected directly to the relay but is wire-nutted with two black wires, one of which does actually go to the relay, and runs up and out of the converter chassis to the back side of the DC fuse circuit board, so it is pretty easy to spot.  The red and blue wires also run up and out of the converter chassis to the back side of the DC fuse circuit board.  (We will be cutting these three wires.)

When you cut these three wires in a few minutes, you should have enough slack remaining to strip them, and directly connect them to the new 9145 converter.  Also, when you cut these wires, you want to cut the red and blue ones as close to the relay as possible, but you might want to leave about 1/2 inch of the colored insulation remaining on the relay terminals so in case you sell or give away the old converter, the new owner can tell what color wire went where.  For the same reason, you want to cut the white wire close to the wire nut, but leave a little white insulation remaining for the same reason.  Also, this 1/2 inch of wire will give the next user something to solder to, since the red and blue connections, (at least on mine) were not slip on type, and the wire nut was not the removable type.

OK, go ahead and cut all three wires as described and you should now be able to slide the old chassis out the front and set it aside out of the way (like maybe in the attic).

Strip about an inch of insulation off the red and blue wires and twist them together.  This is your new 12 volt positive connection.

Strip about 1/2 inch of insulation off the white wire.  This is your new 12-volt negative/ground connection.

Check to see how much slack is left.  As I mentioned above, the red/blue pair, and the white wire should have enough slack to connect to the new 9140 converter output terminals without adding any.  (Mine didn't have much, but it was enough to reach.)

INSTALLING THE NEW CONVERTER AC WIRES

There are two ways to connect the AC power to the new converter:  Method #1, Cut off the supplied AC plug, and hardwire it directly to the breaker box.  Method #2, Make up a pigtail with a female AC connector that hardwires to the breaker box, and plug the supplied cord into that.  I opted for Method #2.

If you choose the pigtail route, find an expendable extension cord. I recommend at least 14 gauge, (like one of the Orange, Black&Decker outdoor cords), and cut it about 18 inches from the female end, strip about 4 inches of the outer sheath off, and strip about 1/2 inch of insulation off each of the black, white, and green wires at the cut end.

Take the ends of the extension cord you just stripped, twist each of them, shove them up into the circuit breaker compartment through the same hole the previous ac wiring went through, and connect each of the wires to the locations you removed the converter ac wires from earlier.  Connect white to the neutral buss, green to the ground buss, and black to the breaker that you removed the wire from earlier.

Don't plug in the converter ac power yet.

INSTALLING THE NEW CONVERTER DC WIRES

If you are going to use the optional 9100 series Charge Wizard controller, (and I strongly recommend it, it's the best $25-$30 investment you could make), you might want to locate it in your desired location now, route it's wire, and plug it into the converter.

Scoot the new converter close to the opening with the output terminals on the right.  Loosen the converter terminal setscrews an install the red/blue positive pair to the positive terminal, and the white negative lead to the negative terminal.  DOUBLE CHECK THE POLARITY. MAKE SURE THE RED/BLUE GOES TO THE POSITIVE, AND WHITE TO THE NEGATIVE.  Once again, your amount of slack might be marginal, but it should reach.  (If not just wire nut a 6-inch length of 8 AWG or 10 AWG stranded wire onto the leads to lengthen them.  If you do accidentally screw up and get the polarity reversed, it will not hurt the converter, but only blow the two polarity protection fuses located adjacent to the output + and - terminals.  Fuse replacement will require removal of the Wizard plug for clearance. Plug the converter AC power plug into the pigtail you made.  Shove the whole mess into the opening previously occupied by the old converter, and try to place it just a little right of center so you won't restrict the fan exhaust flow.

You're done!!  (Well almost) Reconnect the battery negative cable, and reconnect shore power.

If you want to fasten the converter to the floor, just use a couple of 1 or so drywall screws with washers (you'll need a stubby screwdriver).  I didn't fasten mine because my water tank is behind it, and it can't go anywhere once I put the front back on.

At this point, if you what to get a warm fuzzy feeling about the converter output, you may want to measure the battery voltage before you restore ac power, and then again after.

When you removed the old converter chassis, you also removed the surface that the front panel fastened to, so you will have to fabricate a new mount for that.  The absolute easiest method is to use the existing four screw holes and using four drywall screws, screw them into the wood frame surrounding the converter chassis, but you will have to drill four new matching holes in the converter chassis to allow the screws to pass though the metal chassis into the wood behind it.  There are several methods, but I used wood spacers because I needed the extra clearance for my meter shunt and terminal block that was part of my meter panel.

THE CHARGE WIZARD

The charger that is equipped with the optional Charge Wizard has three rates: 14.4 volts (boost), 13.8 volts (normal), and 13.2 volts (float)

When you power up, the green light on the Charge Wizard will probably come on solid, indicating a "boost" charge rate.  After about 4 hours or less, the light will start to blink about 1 per second indicating a "normal" charge rate.  When the batteries reach full charge, the light will slow to one blink about every 15 seconds, indicating a "float" charge rate.  You can manually change the rate back and forth between boost and normal by holding the button on the Wizard until the flash rate of the light changes.  You cannot force it into a float rate manually.  Every 21 hours, the boost rate will kick in for 15 minutes to de-sulphate the batteries.  When the RV is left connected to shore power continuously, it will settle down to a float rate indefinitely except for the de-sulphate cycle, so the battery should never boil dry, but checking the water level every two to four weeks is probably still a good idea.

Rick