Tiara main panel breaker is 3 poles, 30 amps??

[sdowney717]

Anyone have an idea why Tiara would do such a thing?
The breaker is failing, sometimes cant turn on.
I opened up the panel, and it is 3 poles.

I suppose a 2 pole breaker can be made to work. But its odd they did this. IMO.

I cant even fine a 30 amp 3 pole boat breaker, the boat is a 31 Tiara from mid 1980's.

[smac999]

sometimes the ground runs through a 3rd pole, the 3rd pole is not 30a but trips with reverse polity. so it's a special breaker where 2 polls are 30a and 3rd is different. if the 3rd wire is green / ground I would directly connect them and ditch the silly green disconnect. (or follow wires and reconnect somewhere better then back of breaker panel)

or the boat is 240v.. in which case it has to be 3 pole. but I've never seen a 30a 240v boat.

[stormalong]

smac999 is correct. The third pole is the ground. This was the predecessor to the GFCIs in use today. My 1985 boat has the same breaker. If the breaker is tripping remove the green wire and see if everything still works. You may have a short to ground somewhere that is tripping the breaker. I would not just bypass the third pole - you may have an undiscovered problem. You may also want to fit GFCIs on your outlets - one at the head of each string as a safety precaution. If you don't know what I am talking about you need to hire an electrician.

[sdowney717]

Yes, it has GFCI outlets. And they appear to work.
The handle clicks over, the analog meter needle jumps up, then falls back to zero, sometimes, and other times, the needle stays up. This is on a friends boat, so someday we will look more closely at what they did.

Reverse polarity breaker?, interesting, and is there a part number today?

Better yet, use a gfci or an elci breaker there.

[sdowney717]

Other issue, we put a 1230P promariner new charger in, and it would run a few minutes, then shut down with FAULT light lit. He has 4 batteries, so had hooked uo the 3 bank charger to them. I could see nothing wrong with the wires.

2 batteries are new, 1 is used but tests good, 1 is used but said replace.
So we disconnect the used bad battery, it faults.
We disconnect the used good battery (now just 2 new batteries) it faults.
Then somehow it decided to work after a few more off and on tests on the 2 new good batteries.
Charger was faulting at under 30 amps output.

I suggested if it faults one more time, send it back to Amazon.

When it is running, I measured voltage and it is 117 vac.

The GFCI outlet is able to run a portable large sump pump, so I dont think it is an amps or voltage issue.