Battery charger electrical advice and help needed - please.

[Bruce Morris]

Rob, FWIW when I talked to the technical folks about installing two IOTA
chargers in the Bear's Den they told me that I could not use two separate charge
wizards. They said it can damage the chargers and that they make a single
charge wizard that controls two chargers that is made for the two charger
configuration.

Bruce Morris (919)872-7635 Raleigh, NC
Webmaster - WOO (http://www.wanderlodge.us)
1983 WL FC35RB

FMCA: 7142s Ham Radio: KI4ME
Vietnam Vet - 1966-67 'Doc' (Navy Corpsman) 3rd MarDiv

----- Original Message -----
From: Rob Robinson
To: WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: [WanderlodgeForum] 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

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