BillandCarole
Vacaville, CA,, USA
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In preparation for an up coming trip, I went into our 5th wheel this evening and turned on the dining table light. It came on VERY dim and a visit to our volt meter indicated that batter voltage was down to 2.8 volts and battery panel would not test. I plugged in shore power and voltage immediately jumped to 13.6, and the battery panel indicated that the batteries were fully charged. The charge held good and the light burned bright even after I disconnected the shore power. The rig has never performed like this before. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks
Bill
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Fire Instructor
Upstate (Albany) NY Area
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Sounds like a bad battery, but that can't be confirmed without testing. Pull it out and take it to a local battery shop, and they can run a quick diagnosis.
Fire Instructor
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cyber-vanner
Richmond VA
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Bad battery maybe. It's holding a charge, but not for very long. Try running that light for any longer duration...like an hour or so, and its probably gonna get dim quickly. The battery is probably very low, and you just burned of the "surface charge" Let it charge overnight on the converter, and then try again.
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smkettner
Southern California
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Does the battery have water covering the plates? What was the voltage on the actual battery terminals when you were reading 2.8v in the RV? If the battery was actually at 2.8 volts it would take 8 to 48 hours to charge.... not just a few minutes.
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Executive
California/Arizona/South Dakota
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Loose or corroded battery terminals....take them off, clean them and reinstall. Sometimes they are bad even though they look good and feel tight.....Dennis
Dennis and Debi
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tvman44
Southwest Louisiana
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Sounds like possibly a battery going bad, get it load check at any auto parts store.
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pulsar
Lewisville, NC
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Moved from Technology Corner to Tech Issues.
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Fire Instructor
Upstate (Albany) NY Area
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If you believe the battery to be good, but it's still draining that quickly, then check the pull-out break-away cable for the brakes. If thuis is pulled out it draws the battery down VERY quickly (and burns out the electro magnet on the brakes).
A very unscientific (and potentially dangerous) method to see if there is a heavy electrical load drawing, is to see how "big" the arc is when you connect a good battery into the system. If there is little or no draw, then there will be little or no arc. If there's a big power-user pulling amps, you'll see it with the bigger arc. Don't deliberately do this, as it can damage the battery or wire terminals, or much worse....
THIS CAN BE DANGEROUS!!! The arc can ignite any battery fumes that are lingering. If you absolutly MUST connect a battery under heavy load, make sure that you do it in a well ventilated battery compartment, that you have a long sleeve shirt and gloves on, that you lean away from your work, not standing right over it (just in-case something bad happens).
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BillandCarole
Vacaville, CA,, USA
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The consensus opinion is that we have a battery issue. I will definitely load test the batteries to see how long they last. They are 4 years old and are not the golf cart batteries we hope to use as replacements. A battery terminal cleaning "party" is also on order. Definitely don't want to go wandering off into the woods with a bad battery or batteries.
Thanks Everyone
Bill and Carole
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wa8yxm
Wherever I happen to park
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Joined: 07/04/2006
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Let me see if I have it right
Rig was sitting there in "Storage" as it were, not in use
You went out, after a considerable period of time (more than a week since last plugged in) and the lights were dim and the voltage almost non existant
you plugged in and everything worked as designed
You later (More than 8 hours) later unplugged and it continued to work.
Actually. More or less normal
Even if you use the batttery disconnect (May be marked USE/STORE) switch to disconnect the batteries there are some loads that remain. and over time these will run down the battery, How long it takes depends on several things including the type/size of the battery bank. The age of the batteries, the number of "parasitic" as they are called loads (OR rather the size of them total) and how well you have cared for the batteries (Flooded wet cells, like the popular CG-2 Six volt pairs, need to be given a drink of distilled water on occasion)
There are other possible issues too... But those are the biggies.
Nothin adds excitment like something that is none of your business
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