Liberty Coach Shut Down

[truk4u]

Harry,
Your fortunate, the Marathon only charges the chassis batteries from the 24V alternator, not the generator. I also added the 24V Battery Tender to the chassis batteries, but like Jon, if I didn't use the Battery Tender, mine would set for months and lose very little voltage.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Jeff, don't worry about jumping in, and especially don't think this is a Liberty site. Ole Harry that posted ahead of you is a Royale owner.

If you are having trouble with batteries (house or bus) there are two things that are important. The first is to test them individually. If one is bad all the others are affected. If they test good, and you are still draining them when you should not be the probability is you have loads on them you do not know about. You need to find those loads and determine if they should be on, and if not either disconnect them or turn them off.

Harry, if your alternator voltage regulator is functioning properly, you will know it. Turn on the key and read the voltage with all chargers off and the bus engine shut down. Then start the bus. The engine running voltage should be around 13.5 or 27. The voltage regulator will not "wait" for battery voltage to drop to some low value, but will constantly be maintaining the voltage listed above. All the voltage regulator is doing is opening and closing the field circuit on the alternator to maintain the voltage. If the circuit is open, no voltage is produced by the alternator, and if the circuit remains closed, the alternator will produce excessive voltage capable of damaging the coach.

As far as inverter fans, I can't tell you what other converters are doing, but my Liberty has fans internal to the inverters. But in addition to those which cycle on or off with an internal thermostat, I have a manually controlled fan, that I leave on constantly to protect the inverters in the event the internal fan fails.

[win42]

Jon: Ole Harry? Ole? You got your nerve calling people ole. You were around when Moby Dick was a minnow. Your probably Lewpops older brother. Eeewe that was a low punch.

Anyway Ole Jon please give me a read again and see if you agree that while shut down and on shore power I should add a 12V "Battery Tender" to the 12V connection on the chassis batteries to balance them. That is what's happening when the engine is running with 12 & 24 V alternators feeding them.

My problem of not being able to start after a run is complicated by the dash battery meter showing 27 V while running and 22V after shutdown and won't start. Run the geneator for 30 Min with the charger on and Walla it will start. I still suspect intermittant problem with the Alt. regulator. Thanks for outlining it's function, but it still could stop working intermittantly couldn't it. What else? Batteries are new. Come on with that enlarged brain of yours make it groan and come up with the answer. My next run will be in two weeks.
Thx
Young & Vibrante Harry

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Harry,

Forget the alternator.

First find out why your batteries are down to 22V.

After being fully charged, and the surface voltage disipated, your resting battery voltage should read about 25.4 volts. At 22 volts they are effectively dead.

Check each individually, and if they check OK find out what the load is that is pulling them down.

Your battery tender usage is akin to taking an aspirin for a brain tumor.

[garyde]

Number one; All Coaches are different but inverters and batteries are the same. Managing Inverters can be frustrating. As far as I know, the only way you can stop your batteries from dischargng when dry camping is to pull the wires off the batteries. Even if you turned the inverters off, the parasitic loads are still there. Depending on the percentage of charge your battery has, it will need re -charging within 8 hours by Generator, your engine, or shore power. The recommendation is to not let your batteries go down past 50 - 60 Percent before recharging. I had the Heart Inverter Rep change the readings on my previous coach displays to percentage readings instead of Amp Hours so I could monitor better the discharge rate. The Inverters ony shut down after they reach Float stage and that only happens when you are charging by Gen., Engine or Shore. Hope that helps.