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I upgraded from the WFCO 8735 to the PD 4135 on my A122 A-frame. I strongly recommend you take your trip and do the swap out when you have more time. Also, I should note I have experience in home, auto, and boat wiring, and have wired home AC breaker panels on several occasions.
The physical size of the 4135 was CLOSE, but it was NOT an exact fit. I had to widen the hole about 1/2" to make it work.
I spent several hours trying to plan out the electrical portion of the swap out. Behind my WFCO was an incredible rat's nest of wires, with no apparent identification. More importantly, the wire connections were all a series of clear, crimped "wire nuts" where you could see some of the "joined" wires barely making contact.
The other issue was the WFCO had 7 seven fuses on the DC side, while the PD only has 6. I finally figured out that one of the fuses in the WFCO was a reverse polarity fuse, and was not attached to any external circuit.
The one good thing in the planning was that the wire labels and color codes on the WFCO interior turned out to be fairly accurate. And the wire size was correct for the fuse/circuit breaker. And there was plenty of slack in all wires.
I started the swap out by having both converters sitting side-by-side, with neither installed in the hole. I started by moving the master AC circuit breaker (30 amp), and connected the shore power cord to the breaker and panel. 2nd was the converter circuit breaker and the AC wires to the converter section. I then attached the remaining AC neutral and grounds to the 2 bus bars before moving the remaining circuit breakers - the breakers cover up the bus bars and their connections.
On the DC side, I mounted a negative bus bar near the converter hole to get rid of much of the wire nut maze. Only one of the DC circuits on my A-frame was split into multiple runs at the converter - the circuit that powers "everything else" (stereo, CO/propane alarm, porch and tongue lights, night light, volt meter, fridge fan, etc). I put in a small bus bar for the positive side of this circuit.
The other 5 DC circuits (fridge, battery, thermostat, water pump, upper lights and vent fan) were all single wires connecting directly to the converter leads from the DC fuses. I used waterproof butt connectors for these connections.
I tested each circuit as I moved it over to the 4135 to catch any mistakes early (I didn't make any for once in my life). Total time for the swap-out was 8 hours spread over 2 days, plus about 3-4 hours of prior planning and getting bus bars and butt connectors.
I really, really like the PD 4135. It charges my 2 GC-2 6V batteries very nicely. When it's in bulk mode, I can occasionally hear some capacitor squealing when things are very quiet. The fan is very hard to hear. The PD 4135 shifts modes from bulk to normal to trickle as it should (my WFCO did not), and holds bulk mode to 90% of charge for a much faster recharge. Technically, I could have installed a bigger converter (50 amps) for more amps when in bulk mode because of the dual golf cart batteries, but frankly I'm happy with what I have.
I installed a small DC digital voltmeter near the door with an on/off switch to monitor voltages as desired.
hope this helps
Fred W
2014 Rockwood A122 A-frame
2008 Hyundai Entourage minivan
camping Colorado and adjacent states one weekend at a time
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Linear Mode
