Well into my trip to Canada I encountered the dreaded “08” and “07” errors on my Xantrex Inverter. This indicates at least one of the fans has failed. In my case, and probably most cases, the fan hasn’t actually failed – the tachometer signal the fan sends back to the Inverter to prove its running – stopped working.
This is a pretty catastrophic error. The Xantrex goes into “bypass mode” (so you can still use generator or shore power) but you loose the inverter and battery charger.
Fortunately, I have an onboard Victron 25 amp battery charger that’s wired permanently and I’ve never actually used in 4 years. So I just had to turn on its breaker and at least I had a small shore power charger again.
Since my inverter is quite difficult to remove (have to pull both batteries first) and since I was in Canada at the end of my trip anyway, we just headed home.
Reminded me of the old days – starting the generator at a rest stop to make coffee!
Once home, I pulled the Xantrex out and started examining it. the case is secured with many small screws. The bigger one has a round sticker over it, and likewise the date code on the other side has a small screw under it. (Obviously you are voiding your warranty)
From online reports, Xantrex tells customers to throw the Inverter in the trash when the fan fails. Hopefully this is an easy fix.
Once you get all the screws off, gently open the top and rest behind the Xantrex.
The circuits are all protected by the paper guard you see above. I had already cut a few zip ties and peeled back the top part to expose the fans so I could get a part number. I subsequently decided to make two scissors cuts so I could remove the guard. I didn’t see any need to remove the cover or disconnect all the wires that are not really in the way.
The fans are easily removed. These are the culprits:
A Google search shows these are really rare fans. I found them on the Chinese manufacturer website and also a Hungarian website. Although one or both had failed, they have been spinning for 4 years outside so I really can’t complain. But I didn’t want to wait weeks for a replacement to ship (not to mention the [shudder] tariff these days) – so I started looking for a replacement.
These are 92mm X 25mm fans so not that hard to find. I used chatGPT to search for replacements and here is one of these sessions:
So in the chart above the first entry is the Xantrex OEM fan, the second is a common fan available immediately on Amazon, and the last (and the ones I chose) a higher quality industrial fan not usually sold on consumer sites like Amazon but available on Mouser.
I chose the Delta because its a solid fan and its airflow is significantly higher than the OEM fan (which is already a beast). The Arctic fan in the middle of the chart (recommened by an excellent video I found online) was available on Amazon Prime, but both the Airflow and current were significantly lower. This causes me to suspect I would experience issues in extreme conditions which I encounter sometimes in the summer heat.
The Delta fans are real monsters for this size, and louder. But the fans only run on full speed when needed, and are barely audible in the coach, so I can live with that.
I overnighted them (ouch) from Mouser (link below) and they showed up bulk wrapped with no connector. Which is great, as the Xantrex uses a non-standard 3 wire plug anyway – which is skinnier than standard PC fan plugs. So I had to cut the connector off the Xantrex fans and solder 3 wires on each to the new fans. The 4th (PWM lead) is not used.
Note that Delta uses Blue for the tachometer, so the wiring is red to red, black to black, and yellow to blue.
I used “Western Union” splices and solder, covered with heat shrink tubing and zip tied for safety. This picture shows the new fans installed.
The grills were rusted, so I also installed new fan grills. This is the exterior view:
To test it, I just connected a standard AC cord:
I plugged it in and it worked great! These turbo fans really do push some air. You get an error initially as there is no battery present but then eventually it settles down, spinds down the fans, and its ready for reinstall.
So this failure has a happy ending. For a small amount of money I got enhanced cooling and reliability, and we are off and running again.
Here are some useful parts. The fans are available at Mouser
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