Battery Boiler Bye Bye

[birdshill123]

I read this forum faithfully. As a newbie a lot of my questions have
been answered on this forum. There are also many members who have
emialed me lengthy answers to a few questions that I posted: Bob
Jane, Bill Pape , Tom Warner and others. Now it is time for me to add
a few tidbits.
Before we bought our Bird I read about the battery chargers that are
OEM and how they can be harmfull to your battery bank. The 2nd day we
had our Bird I decided to replace the Pacs inverter and the charger.
I ordered the inverter from http://www.sunelec.com . It is a factory rebuilt
458 Freedom 20. I also ordered the basic remote. Cost was $679.81
including freight to Tucson. I have seen this setup for over $1200 on
the net. Looking at the unit I suspect it is new and was never used.
Sunelec does not have the best people answering their phones but the
owner (or manager) offered his assistance.

I installed the inverter in the front bay where I removed the Pacs
inverter. I was able to use the original 12 volt 2/0 cables and the
ac output romex. The Pacs does not have a charger so there was no AC
power in the compartment. When I have removed the old charger from
the next bay I will run the input wires to the Xantrex. In the
meantime I am using an extension cord as the Bird is not being used.
My batteries were very low. About 11.8 volts. I still had the old
charger and it just would not put out enough juice to get a good
charge. It was almost 100 degrees and the charger was hot enough to
fry eggs. I plugged in the Xantrex, set the battery type and amp
hours. Immediately the Xantrex fired up and it is putting out 14.2
volts. That is the first stage. I can hear the acid bubbling. I will
report later when the batteries are fully charged. The Xantrex also
runs much cooler. An added bonus is that after I remove the old
charger and that huge cooling fan I will gain a storage bay. I am
sorry I did not put a clamp ammeter on the old setup to see how many
amps it was drawing but I bet it is more than the Xantrex.

Bruce 1988 FC35