Lightning damage?

[Chris]

While dodging most of the many storms hitting the Midwest the last couple of weeks, we were watching a storm from our boat in a port and lightning hit the shore just next to us.  It knocked out the fuel pumps on the fuel dock near us, but we thought we were ok.  The next day, we noticed our batteries were not charged well.  Since we were cruising and thought the batteries were ready to be replaced anyway, we replaced them and went on cruising (as usual, mostly motoring!).  Everything seemed fine till we came home and left the boat in port (on shore power) for 3 days (with refrig running).  Then the  new batteries were also low.  We think the TruCharge 20 3-bank charger may have gotten a power surge or something, and the instruction book suggests that there may be an internal fuse that should only be replaced by "an authorized service representative". Anyone have experience with this - is the fuse something we should try ourselves?

[Howard Armstrong]

I was struck last year and had the same charger you do. the company has a return policy for a flat rate you get another charger. Good luck. i hope that is all the damage you have.

[karista]

The exact same thing happened to me about 4 weeks ago. I also have the True Charge 20, the internal fuse is easily checked by carefully removing the small screws holding the cover. In my case the fuse was ok, but the charger was dead. I returned it to the factory, their replacement charge was $150.

Bernd Mueller