Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Topic: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt (Read 86 times) previous topic - next topic

Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

May 24, 2026, 08:05:16 PM

TLDR: I haven't fixed it yet. But I'm closer to knowing what's wrong!

Something went wrong with my TriStar TS-60 a month ago. Probably while I was messing around with something else and connected the Sol-Ark inverter to the batteries while the Tristar was still connected.
I've already learned that the Tristar and Sol-Ark don't get along, but I forgot, and had a panicky moment running to the breaker to shut off the Tristar but the damage was done. And since the Tristar was being forced to run its diversion load at 100% by the Sol-Ark at the time, I think shutting down the Tristar that way caused it to have a disconnect while it still had diversion load terminals energized.

I knew something was wrong when I went to reactivate the wind turbine system. The Tristar was locked into 100% diversion, even at modest battery voltage. No change of settings would convince it to stop running the diversion load at full power.

A replacement Tristar is on its way (should be here soon) but in the meantime I wanted to see if I could fix the Tristar, or at least figure out what I'd done to it.

Helpful: The Morningstar website has a Testing manual AND at Repair manual for download. These days that's almost unheard of. The test manual has a series of procedures to follow to help you figure out what's wrong. I'll follow up with a post about doing these tests, but right now I have to go and find where I left my cell phone...

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #1 – May 24, 2026, 08:53:02 PM

The Testing manual guides you through several tests. I had to re-do some because I didn't follow the instructions properly.
But the main obstacle I had was finding a suitable power supply for the tests. They specified that the power supply needs to provide "18-20V" and be "current limited". Well I really don't have a bench power supply that does that any more. I spent some time cobbling together a few batteries that would give me about 24v to work with and then I connected an ammeter that has a fuse in it to provide the current limit. After all that was set up, not before, I turned around and realized that I had a spare solar panel leaning against the work table all this time! duh

Above is the Tristar passing a battery recharge test. I made it through all the tests and the Tristar didn't fail any of them. Hmm.
I tried doing several things that didn't do any good so I won't waste your time describing them.

Out of ideas, I gave it a good cleaning while it was out and discovered a huge wad of gunk on the DIP switch panel. Cleaning the gunk off I could tell that the gunk has oozed under the DIP switches too. Since then I've been focused on figuring out if the DIP switches are the cause of all the problems. At first I thought DIP 7 was the culprit, having the worst of the gunk under it. Tried a few ways to clean under it more vigorously, but failed. A long time later (I'm really slow it seems) I realized I could test for continuity on DIP switches easily. Once I did that, it became obvious that DIP 2 is not closing when switched, and remains in the open state all times. All of the other DIP switches went from open to closed when switched.

From this I'm able to conclude that DIP switch 2 being stuck open causes the Tristar to think it's always in 12 Volt mode, even when set to 48 volt mode. For a diversion charge controller to think it's set to 12V, but hooked up to a 48V system, it would indeed run the diversion at 100%, because it thinks the battery is overcharged. It also explains why it passed the tests yesterday, because those tests only used 12V batteries.

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #2 – May 24, 2026, 08:57:24 PM

I think I can solder a little piece of wire across the DIP 2 pins and make it a permanently Closed switch. Then the Tristar would work on 24v and 48v batteries, but I'd have to be careful if I wanted to do other bench tests on it, because a 12v test setup wouldn't work.

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #3 – May 25, 2026, 07:04:37 AM

That will work but MAKE SURE to clean every bit of gunk from under the switch. That is a double sided circuit board and gunk tends to eat the copper pads. If there are any electrolytic capacitors above that switch check then to see if any bulged and leaked and replace them... they have a finite life span...

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #4 – May 25, 2026, 08:53:24 PM

The little wire shunt didn't work. Shrug, worth a try, and not much too lose.

Yes with some light and a magnifying glass I can see that under the DIP switch panel there's still a lot more crap under there probably corroding the rest away, maybe other pins are about to go next. A proper fix is only to de-solder the whole DIP switch block (16 pins) and put a new one on. That wouldn't be too hard or expensive, so I think I'll try it. First just for the challenge and second for the chance to restore a devise that has otherwise worked well for many years.

I tried prying the heat-sink off but the FET's are stuck on tightly and I didn't want to break anything. Nonetheless Morningstar tells me it's possible and provides instructions to do it in a manual for ambitious folks who want to de-solder and replace burned out MOSTFETs. That doesn't seem to be my problem but if the heat sink can be removed that would help me access and replace the DIP switch panel.

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #5 – May 26, 2026, 07:17:51 AM

Quote from: SparWeb – on May 25, 2026, 08:53:24 PM

The little wire shunt didn't work. Shrug, worth a try, and not much too lose.

Yes with some light and a magnifying glass I can see that under the DIP switch panel there's still a lot more crap under there probably corroding the rest away, maybe other pins are about to go next. A proper fix is only to de-solder the whole DIP switch block (16 pins) and put a new one on. That wouldn't be too hard or expensive, so I think I'll try it. First just for the challenge and second for the chance to restore a devise that has otherwise worked well for many years.

I tried prying the heat-sink off but the FET's are stuck on tightly and I didn't want to break anything. Nonetheless Morningstar tells me it's possible and provides instructions to do it in a manual for ambitious folks who want to de-solder and replace burned out MOSTFETs. That doesn't seem to be my problem but if the heat sink can be removed that would help me access and replace the DIP switch panel.

A little 90% isopropyl alcohol dribbled on the transistor tab/heatsink interface in a way that lets it run down down behind the tab will help loosen them. Heat sink compound gets old and dried up and replacing it wouldn't hurt either!

Unless you are skilled in desoldered something on a double sided board I wouldn't try it. Better yo break the dip switch case apart and nibble it down to just pins sticking thru then remove one pin at a time. At the casino we had boards with them that were in the path of drink spills and the boards weren't high quality. So we destroyed the switch and removed a pin at a time then use solder wick(Chem Wik brand for best results!) to clean each hole being very careful how much heat is applied. If you lose a bad don't panic, you can look on the schematic/follow the traces and run a tiny wire between points trying to follow the original trace path. Did a lot of that at the casino when drink spills ate traces off boards. A slot machine CPU board was a $10,000 replacement so we patched until it was impossible to patch any more

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #6 – May 27, 2026, 09:19:10 PM

Great idea! I can see breaking the DIP sw block away a piece at a time. Once the big pieces are cleared off the board I can finish the cleaning. Then the re-soldering will be the mot effective.

Re: Tristar TS60 Repair attempt

Reply #7 – May 28, 2026, 04:46:18 AM

Do it GENTLY!!! You can crack a board trace if you apply to much force. Hence my nibble suggestion...