Battery charger electrical advice and help needed - please.
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09-05-2006, 04:25
Post: #1
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Battery charger electrical advice and help needed - please.
Gang. Please know going into this thing that I'm well aware that
I'm wordy - but I do so in an effort to be thorough. So please, grab a soda and get comfy. ![]() I lurk here often and post very little. We are in our 3rd summer with our 80 BB 35FC and it has been bitter sweet. The payments are bitter for 12 months a year, and the bus is sweet when we use it for about 12 days a year. ![]() Anyways, it's getting harder to justify and we have toyed with the idea of selling it after this past Labor Day weekend, but it gave us a little "gotcha" when it came time to go home. I don't know if it was "quitting before we could fire it" or what, but I could use some help on the problem if/before we put it on the market. The problem: I think my battery chargers are hosed. When we bought the bus, the Trojan batteries had been killed by the PO leaving the fridge set to electrical. We dealt with them not holding a charge until last summer when I bought 4 new batteries. Even then, it seemed that even though I'd make sure I had everythign off - something drained them. I got tired of them being drained when I'd go out for the monthly "start up and run for awile" so I decided to just leave the bus plugged in to my garage. That was fine until my new batteries blew up. I replaced those batteries with 4 new ones in June and all seemed well through our trip in July. I was told that my 1980 chargers wouldn't trickle charge, but were steady pumpers that over charged the batteries. Lesson learned. When we got home from the July trip, I plugged the bus into the house again. It took me about 3 weeks to remember, but I unplugged the chargers too. On this past Friday I went out to fire the old girl up and she was dead. I plugged in the chargers and Saturday morning it fired right up. After work on saturday, I went to start it again and it cranked very slowly, then on the last possible revolution - she took off and purred like I knew she would and I took the bus to the campground where my family already was waiting for me with other family members. I plugged into 30 amp shore power with the chargers on until Monday afternoon. When I went to start it to leave, it wouldn't even click. I think I had an anurism. I found that with the chargers plugged in, the volts meter would wiggle at 12 until I tried to start it, then it would shake from pin to pin. It was wierd and I couldn't make any sense of it, but that isn't saying much either. About all I have ever learned about electricity is that it hurts when I touch it. I unplugged the charger and removed the 2 batteries that start the bus and put each one on an external 6V charger. They both took 4 amps for over 2 hours with no improvement. When I removed the other 2 RV batteries so that I could take all 4 in for testing, the ground posts on those two had some deformation and melting, which I knew was bad. I got ANOTHER 4 new batteries, hooked up the 2 that I needed to make it run and it fired right up. We got it home and I un hooked those parallel batteries from one another, the RV ones never did get hooked up, and the chargers are also unplugged for now. It seemed to me and everybody else that the charger that was supposed to be charging the batteries was the very thing that was screwing everything up. It's the only thing that makes sense to me, but like I said - I don't know much about these things and my pool of experience is growing, but still VERY shallow. Thank you for your time and patience with me thus far. Now that you have that little bit of history, my questions are as follows: Does this make sense to anybody else or am I on something that the chargers are hosed? Is there a way to check the charging unit that is hard wired into the bus without unhooking it all? If it only makes sense to replace this unit, what are my "best value" options? Does anybody have a used one that's still good that they'd sell? Thank you very much for your help, John, Adria, Blase, Kaleigh, Jade, and Gage. |
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