Battery charger electrical advice and help needed - please.
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09-05-2006, 04:53
Post: #2
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Battery charger electrical advice and help needed - please.
Orginally I thought you might have changed out the old 'battery boilers'
when you said "lesson learned" but maybe not????? If you didn't then I would change them out with something like Truecharge or IOTA. I have two 55A IOTA with two Charge Wizards attached to give me Bulk, Float and Absorbtion cycles. They were cheaper alternatives to the better option a a Truecharge40 On 05/09/06, Adria Haynes <mrbeebody@...> wrote: > > 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. > > > -- Rob, Sue & Merlin Robinson 94 WLWB [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] |
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