Battery surprise!

[Joe Cannarozzi]

Adam you may be learning maintenance cycles here. It is getting close to a year now. That overnight may help with the gen as you questioned. If not you need to check your batts. Is the house 12 volt?

You went from being pretty good to terrible in a matter of 60 to 90 days (some pretty good record keeping too) That is a sign of a possibly bad apple in the bunch.

I would want to know if there is a week battery in the bank dragging the others down. If there is, the earlier you yank it the less harm it does the rest.

I think full timing as you do, frequently on Batts, isolating and then load testing each one separately at once a year should be on the list.

[phorner]

Adam,

If your remote panel looks like this one, it is simply a matter of removing the four screws to pull the panel out. The dip switches are found on the back.

Real easy. You'll need something small to flip the tiny switches into position.

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

Paul, would you please post a picture of inverter no. 2 panel.

Thanks JIM

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Jim,

The two panels in Paul's, yours, mine etc are identical. What would the second picture show you?

Adam,

.....the inverters don't care or know the source of power so your plan to run the generator makes sense. While access and removing cables may pose a problem it is something that is ultimately going to have to be done. It will be nice if equalization is the silver bullet, and it is certainly the easiest thing to try before going any further, but if it fails to work you or someone will have to access the batteries, remove the cables and do a test.

As a practical matter if I were in your shoes this is what I would do. Run the equalization, and then reset the dip switches to suit your particular situation. If the batteries are still prematurely losing power then testing for a bad battery in the set only pinpoints the issue. It will not change the next step.

If you have a bad battery the entire set needs to be replaced anyway. So who cares which battery puked? Replacing one battery is false economy and Dale Farley did an excellent piece of research that he posted a while back (after Spearfish) that you might wish to review.

Once you decide the batteries need to be replaced you can shop the market, determine which batteries to purchase (each type has its advantages and disadvantages) and figure out how and when you will get the job done.

Unlike my case where a failed battery is something I can deal with at my leisure, and I can test to see if I can learn something (won't change the required response) you depend on your batteries so you need to react sooner rather than later otherwise you are going to end up nursing a sick set of batteries.

[truk4u]

Adam,

If you do any battery or cable removing from the house batteries, make sure you first unhook the ground wire to the Equalizer that is behind a panel in your battery bay. Regardless of what anyone tells you, it's a nightmare to just remove the cables one at a time for load testing in your Marathon. The fact they're hooked in series/parallel makes getting the cables in the proper place is critical. I changed out all my house and gen batteries in my Marathon and it was a BIG job, something you wouldn't want to do in a campground. If you get near north GA anytime soon, stop by and I'll help you out, but we would have to get Jon to fly down to do the heavy lifting.

IMG_0263_1.JPG
Yours proably looks like this....

[Jon Wehrenberg]

If and when the time comes to change out batteries Truk is absolutely right. A failure to hook everything back the way it was can have some serious consequences. Unless you can get a battery supplier to sell you batteries at a fair price INSTALLED you are faced with paying serious dollars to make the change out so consider getting a POG member to help.

If you find someone to do it, take pictures, make sketches, mark the cables with numbers, and generally do whatever you have to do to insure the cables end up where they started.

I dread the day I need to replace house batteries. And my house batteries are right where I can get at them. Chassis batteries will be simple.

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

Jon, I wanted to see where his amps were registering on panel 2.

Mine are always very high, around 20 or above often 55.

JIM

[rfoster]

Jimmy C. What all do you have on when you are pulling over 20?

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Roger asked the correct question Jim.

If you have all the coach lights on it will be common to see one or both of the inverters with high loads on the right hand column.

If you have had the coach dark and the inverters on full time you should see both panels with the RH column display at the lowest level, and it should remain there until you start adding some DC loads such as lights.

If on the other hand with the DC loads off, the load shows the high levels you are seeing, it may be a battery is starting to go bad. Our chach is always plugged in at home and the inverters and house batteries are never turned off, so when I walk into a dark coach and look at the inverter displays my voltages in the left hand column are 27 or thereabouts, and the only lights lit on the right hand column at the bottom lights indicating the inverters are not putting out much if any charging current.

Remember that when you are connected to shore power, even if you have any 120 V circuits drawing current such as the refrigerator, or the forward or rear outlets, the TV, or anything else that goes through the inverters those are only pass through loads and will not add to the load shown on the right hand displays. Those loads will show up on the 120V ammeters.