If the board has more than 2 layers and has corrosion you're wasting your time.

Do not mistake me for an expert.

I figure anything thats been soaked or submerged in water already probably will not be further damaged by a water cleanup.

You might have some luck submerging it in a bath of water thats being agitated to loosen crud gently.

Would all depend on how it looks. If it is just to salvage components a stiff brushing might be OK, but to salvage boards you may scrub off traces by brushing.

I never tried much salvage of corroded boards but have lifted components from them that were fine.

In fact, I might just take the pressure washer and blow off the crud from a distance if I just wanted parts. Lots of variables. Most components are more or less sealed so wet not likely fatal.

Good Luck.

TomW

Contact: IRC

so i guess i will go the alcohol route and a soft brissle tooth brush.

once clean and dry, i would assume i should coat them with something to protect
the boards and to aid in keeping further corrosion in check.

spray laquer, or is there a specific spray on finish to coat the boards?

also i need to make sure the two large transformers are clean and dry
i would suppose connecting them to some low voltage low current source
so that they can slowly heat up and assure they are dry.

how about some form of varnish to reseal them? maybe take them to a motor shop
to have them dipped?

i have tried to contact vanner service dept, but they have not returned my calls as of yet,, i suspect they really don't have much desire in supporting a 10 year old inverter.

thanks

Take sharp clear macro photos or record every component number before starting. You might have big problems after trying to match values or specs if you don't (beyond the OEM relabeling)...

You have one good opportunity to get them clean; 'modern' electronics are NOW almost all water washable since the new VOC guidelines have specified warm water to replace the old flux cleaners, etc.. So on a your 10-year old unit you may have lost a few components already so go for it. Repeated drying cycles are bad if you use heat - kind of my personal opinion but you have a day or two of rinses and one good 12-hour bake then PCB lacquer. If you buy the electronics kind know there are a couple of flavors of it, I don't think you need the $25-a-can 20,000 volt dielectric stuff.

they were advertised as being in a fire, not the cause of the fire!

oh well, i was able to salvage the transfomers, very nice units
that are in the 2kva size if i had to make a guess

the end result is the transformers are about twice what i would likely have paid for them, but probably half of what they sell for new, so i can't complain too much.

you roll the dice and sometimes you crap out i guess.

actually i am very happy to get the transformers.

the upside is the design of the inverter is fairly easy to reverse engineer
the mosfet driver boards albeit fried, have very easily mapped traces and very few components all of which i can read,, and i have been very interested in mosfet drivers for a transformer anyway,, so i can write off part of the cost of these two monsters to education as it applies to mosfet and their drivers.

i think if i am reasonably careful i can salvage one of the logic boards and see if i can learn how the mosfets are controlled.

maybe someday i might even step up and build a modified sine wave inverter using industrial igbts as drivers
i have a 15kva 3phase transformer, and it would be cool to build a monster modified
sine wave 3 phase inverter in the 15 kva class to use for powering intermittently used shop equipment where efficiency is not a major concern.

would have been nice to have had enough out of two inverters to resurrect one, but sadly this is not the case.

it is evident that these inverters were installed without fuse protection on the dc buss, the 4/0 cables provided one heck of alot of amperage to reak havoc inside these inverters.

for the want of a fuse a couple of nice inverters bit the big one, and the coach they were mounted in i am sure has some serious smoke damage if not far worse.

thanks to all that have offered advice.