HMV Barn Project

[Nowhere-Man]

I put a plug on the inverter as it's shown in the booklet and just plugged it in. So, the inverter is secondary and used as an appliance. The battery is reluctant to charge. It may or may not have sulphated but sometimes it's possible to get a charge. Time will tell. I have to step over it as it's on the floor at the moment charging.

Please clarify the above:
It sounds like you fitted a 13 amp plug to the 240v output of the inverter, was this with the view to plugging it into the ships 240v mains circuit.
Highly dangerous, anyone reading this should NEVER attempt to do this.

One thing I discovered was I think it's a ferro resonant charger because the booklet shows a max current of 10 amps at charge yet lower voltage. When the voltage goes up to 13, current drops. There was a debate with a friend about cable size but I ended up fitting a very high amps cable, mainly to accommodate any surge or high load across the inverter.

Unlikely, for leisure use in the 90's, it is more likely to be a constant voltage charger, or switched mode 3 stage charger. (bulk charge equalise, float)
 

This is a modified sine wave unit. Not sure how my radio would work on it.

Modified sine wave is more or less square wave. It may work, but in my experience with valve radios on a modified sine wave inverter there is so much "noise and interference" that the AGC of the radio will be turned full on and it will have difficulty picking up any stations on MW or LW.

Mike

It must be the case I use vague terminology or express myself in ways members are having difficulty understanding. This may well be the case because what I want to communicate is being read in a totally different way.

O.K., the first point is I have never wired this boat up. The whole inverter system was in fact wired in by a qualified AC electrician before I owned it. I haven't done anything to the wiring whatsoever except remove an inverter that had a blown a 15 Amp fuse. I had to remove the inverter  it was boxed in to get at the fuse because if not the system would have been non-operational.

I have not fitted any 13 amp plug to the inverter output. I'm not sure how I might have given that impression. What I did say was the instruction leaflet shows examples of the inverter being used with power connected to a mains socket. That is the supply not the output.

The batteries are now being charged on my boat via the inverter with 100 amp wire. They are only holding about 12.3 volts but are old batteries so I may need to get some better batteries.

I'm afraid at this stage I think it's best I drop out of this site with no hard feelings on my part.   As I said, I think what happens is people are struggling to understand my explanations which I admit is probably due to me being a bit vague at times but my workload is very high and sometimes I get in a rush. As I said, I tend to simply call lead acid batteries car batteries as a colloquial term and didn'tthink I'd need to also explain the difference between CCA batteries and Amp Hour batteries.

I was working on the radio today and expect to have it up and running maybe in 2 months depending upon how things go.