high charge rate

[timebum]

I have a post on Prevost Stuff regarding a serious charge problem...leaving in 2 days on a trip and am perplexed.

[Jerry Winchester]

Have you confirmed that it is indeed 200 amps and not a false reading? I have seen high amp charging rates with my inverter charger, but never with the engine alternator and never that high. Unless you are about to have a diode meltdown with the alternator.

Some of you wireheads chime in here.

[timebum]

Not sure how to check for the amps. I have checked the house batteries (6 8Ds) and all seem to be fine. Each measures about 12.8. The inverter is running correctly and provides AC and a charge to the batteries.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I jumped in on the other site first, but if you want to rule out low battery voltage, charge them up with shore power or the generator, and then see if the high amperage condition continues. If it does after the bus and house batteries are fully charged (and they are known to hold the charge and not be defective) then there is what I would determine a serious problem.

The main focus now is to identify the elctrical load.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

You beat my last post. As they are charging your batteries will register about 13.7 to 14.25 depending on type and the way your chargers or inverters are programmed. the AGM I believe should not exceed about 13.7 or thereabouts.

After the charger is turned off, and the surface charge on the batteries has dissapated (sp) the battery voltage with no load should be around 12.67 or twice those values for 24 systems.

[truk4u]

I may have the same alt, 270 oil cooled. The max charge amps on mine is 150 for 24 volts and I've never seen anything over 90. How did you check the house battery voltage? You have to unhook each cable and check the batteries, otherwise your getting a combination of all the 8D's. They're probably wired in series. After just going through the house battery change, you really need to load test each battery to see what you have, with the cables unhooked. In my previous post, I had 5 bad out of 6 4D's.

[Just Plain Jeff]

This is perplexing.

If the batteries are charging and charged going down the road, your system is working properly.

If you continue to have full charge on shore/generator power, all is working well there.

Then it would narrow things down to the readout (false high amp) you are getting...perhaps a loose wire?

[timebum]

Switched from alternator charging to generator. Now charging at 56 amps at 25.6 volts. I pulled the battery cables and load tested each battery and all were ok. I have to assume that the amp readings are OK since they dropped when I went from 200+ on the alternator to 56 with the generator (17k Power Tech). I have turned off all AC and DC breakers (made no change) and will run the gen for a few hours and see what happens.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

When you picked up your bus were the batteries down? If they were, stop worrying, charge them up and go enjoy your trip. The voltage is a little low, but as the batteries come back to full charge your volts will be higher and your amps will be a lot lower.