Chinook RV

Wow...my CURRENT situation is that my batteries are all lazy and died. They took the path of least resistance.

It's true. I tried to start my rig and nothing happened. So I hooked up the engine battery to my battery charger: 12V at 6 amps (vs 2 amps). I hope to drive it around today, then plug into shore power. Does being plugged in help keep the engine battery charged too, or do I have to keep it hooked up to a trickle charger I got from Harbor Freight?

Blue, I guess I'm gonna have to learn this crap...

If it does not hold charge, you may need to get a new battery. Do you have a voltmeter to measure how much volt it is at after you fully charged it? Make sure it have the right fluid level if it is a wet cell type.

I have a seemingly perfect working chassis battery, until one day it just went dead all of a sudden. It was 6 yrs old.

No matter what, it is still a better news to have to replace the battery, than having a mechanic telling you that your battery need a new rig to hold it.

Astrodokk wrote: February 19th, 2019, 1:21 pm Wow...my CURRENT situation is that my batteries are all lazy and died. They took the path of least resistance.

I guess they're just not amped up about it anymore.

Astrodokk wrote: February 19th, 2019, 1:21 pm Does being plugged in help keep the engine battery charged too, or do I have to keep it hooked up to a trickle charger I got from Harbor Freight?

That depends. If you have the bi-directional Surepower 1315 separator (I did), then I think the answer would be yes. At least if it operates like other bi-directional ones I know, then it's really just a relay. You could think of it as a gate - or maybe a troll at the end of a bridge - between the two battery banks. If the troll sees elevated voltage on either side (i.e. charging), it opens the gate to let the charging bank share with the other bank. If later on the troll sees low voltage on one side of the gate, it closes the gate to preserve the other bank.

A uni-directional unit works the same way, BUT the gate only ever opens in one direction. The Surepower 1314 is uni-directional (it would allow the Ford bank to share with the house bank but not the reverse).

You can test this if you have simple meter.

1) You have to have the STORE switch on in order for any charging to get from the brown box charger (when you plug Chinook in to shore power) to any of the batteries.

2) Once that is on, and you plug in, then your house batteries should show an elevate voltage (somewhere in the 13's). Now, open the hood and check the voltage on the start battery (while truck is not running). If it's around 12.6 then likely no charging is coming through. If it's in the 13's then I'd say you have a uni-directional separator (slight fudging for voltage drop, but I still think you'd see at least 13 coming into the start battery if charge were flowing).

If you have a separate charger that you just put on the house batteries with clips? I think the test should be the same.

Maybe chin_k has a comment as he is clearly handy with meters and troubleshooting.

*****
Also, as chin_k mentioned, even batteries that are pretty worthless will still show a charge/higher voltage after you charge them up. The difference between that and healthy batteries is that when you put load on them (i.e. use them), the good batteries keep up the battle whereas the bad ones fold quickly.

PS: Sorry about the learning curve

I charged the engine battery for a few hours and it started right up. I drove around doing errands and when I parked at home, I tested the coach batts and all the lights lit up.
But to test with a load, I didn’t plug in. I’ll try to start it tomorrow and see if it does, and if the coach lights come on as well.
I took a pic of my coach battery setup. Everything looks clean, but not sure if it’s wired optimally as mentioned in earlier posts. Looks like an LA freeway.

One more real close...

Astrodokk wrote: February 19th, 2019, 8:29 pm I charged the engine battery for a few hours and it started right up. I drove around doing errands and when I parked at home, I tested the coach batts and all the lights lit up.
But to test with a load, I didn’t plug in. I’ll try to start it tomorrow and see if it does, and if the coach lights come on as well.
I took a pic of my coach battery setup. Everything looks clean, but not sure if it’s wired optimally as mentioned in earlier posts. Looks like an LA freeway.

Hello Astro,
Your battery wiring looks pretty typical, and is probably fine, as far as the factory installation goes. The coach and truck batteries are separated by a (surprise) "separator", which allows the coach charger to charge the truck, and the truck alternator to charge the coach batteries, when one is at a charging level and the other is below. This is the Sure power 1315 device,, which is bidirectional. Some Chinooks have a 1314 installed which is unidirectional and does not let the coach charger charge the truck battery, but I think this was not the normal case.

The fact that your truck battery discharged after a relatively short time indicates it is probably weak and will probably need replacing soon. Same with the coach batteries, except there are some parasitic loads on the coach (LP detector, and CO directors, in particular) which will drain them even if the batteries are switched off at the roof switch panel in the cab. Judging by the water damage, it appears that you unit sat for a very long time, and the batteries are probably weakened as a result.

If your unit has the original Magnatek 7300 converter/charger (in the brown box under sink), the batteries will overcharge if you leave your unit plugged into shore power continuously. There is an easy Progressive Dynamics swap out available that will provide a better 3-stage charging scheme, and will not boil out fluid even if the unit is plugged in continuously.

If you have the original solar controller (Mark 15), the solar charging is not very efficient either, and there is a Coleman/Sunforce controller that is the same size, and does a better job than the factory unit.

Changing these two units will allow you to stay plugged in or allow the solar panel to act as a battery maintainer indefinitely (assuming you have good sunlight). Adding 100+ watts of solar panels will make a huge difference in off-the grid usage and battery maintenance (again assuming sunlight is available).

Obvously there are a thousand different power upgrade paths, but these upgrades are minimally intrusive, and did the trick for us over the last four years. You can read about my specific case on my blog, here:

http://clayrushing.com/2017/01/21/chino ... -upgrades/

Our units are pretty much equivalent, as I have a 2001 Concourse, based on a 2000 chassis.

You should also disconnect your carbon monoxide monitor, as it has a big parasatic draw, and the sensor is way past its lifetime. I bought a small battery operated sensor and just keep it on our kitchen shelf.


Clay

Another draw (on mine) is if you leave that tiny switch on the antenna on.