Batteries Overcharging Badly

[mhughes01]

Thanks for the ideas David. I haven't heard back from the shop yet but will go in on Monday and see how they are making out. He was doing things with meters last week and is generally a pretty knowledgeable guy working on lots of Monacos, Newell's, etc. there are also not many options around these parts.

I've never touched any of the inverter charge settings, I don't even know how. But will figure out how to check if they are on Gel or FLA.

He said one leg of the alternator was dead, so that and the regulator got replaced. but who knows. That was nearly $3,000 right there with parts and labour.

I don't normally leave the aux batt switch on unless I need the extra boost.

Thankfully I had bills for the chassis batteries and 2 of the 4Ds. I am awful with receipts. He says they get about 1 new battery in 10 with dead cells right out of the box (Interstates). The chassis were Interstate 30s or 31s if I recall. I ended up welding hoops onto the battery trays (before all the h2s obviously with the old batts so I could pull the trays out with my quad as they were seized). The temp sensors have always been on the top of the batteries- do they need to be on the side? Not sure what to hold them with.

When I picked it up last week, It was showing over 14v on both dash gauges (house and chassis) and I didn't smell anything when hooking up my toad. It was a couple miles down the road when i stopped to double check the toad that i noticed the smell. All of the 4Ds seemed to be gassing. I couldn't tell on the chassis. The coach has always had FLAs since we've owned it and I've never touched the inverters.

Once it was back in the shop, and on his Snap On analyzer in the back on the batteries there was also over 14v and there seemed to be a lot of draw (I think he said 40 something amps on chassis, and 78 on house). I killed all the breakers for him and it was down to very little making me wonder if the only thing left drawing current was a shorted cell or two in the batteries. He told me his next step was pulling all the batteries and doing detailed testing, but I haven't gotten a call back as yet. He's got other customers to.

I was more frustrated than anything as we have a big trip planned to Illinois in a few days and they've had my coach for well over a month.