Maintainers: If your ATVs put out at least 1.5amps they should be OK.
You really need a good automatic charger too. The longer a battery is discharged the more damage is done. They "sulfate" and it is hard to undo this damage. I recommend a 20 amp smart charger. You are also going to need this to charge your house battery from your generator when camping. It will still take hours to charge, depending on how discharged it gets. You should never let them get below 12.2v (50%) discharged. More than this and they get damaged. Oh and always use deep-cycle batteries for the house. Not marine becuase they are made for both starting and deep cycle and thus are not great at either. Still a marine is better than a regular car starter battery.
I know so much to know...
Maya.215 wrote:
Ok so basically I should have a wire running from the the terminal marked battery on that black fuse box I took pic of to my house battery ?
Ok so basically I should have a wire running from the the terminal marked battery on that black fuse box I took pic of to my house battery ?
Need more info on how your motorhome is wired. (And need more time to study what you've already posted.)
For now, the answer is yes, and the wire should be at least stranded 10 AWG. (8 or 6 AWG would be better/safer, but 10 AWG should be sufficient.)
When I get somewhat un-busy (ha-ha), I'll be posting better information with definite recommendations on how to bring everything up to tip-top, reliable condition.
The converter/battery source switch is important. Without verifying, I'd say right now the center terminal of the switch should go to the battery terminal on the fuse block. One of the outer switch terminals should go to the battery and the other outer switch terminal should go to the converter/power supply.
1970 Explorer Class A on a 1969 Dodge M300 chassis with 318 cu. in. (split year)
1972 Executive Class A on a Dodge M375 chassis with 413 cu. in.
1973 Explorer Class A on a Dodge RM350 (R4) chassis with 318 engine & tranny from 1970 Explorer Class A
I wouldn't get a new deep-cycle until you need it. If you do you are going to have to maintain it also, and the warranty may run out before you even use it.
Spend your money on the charger.
Even old RVs typically have an automatic connection to the house battery when the ignition is on. So, your house battery does get charged when you are travelling. The way to test this is start the engine and then measure the house battery voltage again. It should be 14v plus. If it still reads 12.4 then either you don't have the device or it is not working.
>Ok so basically I should have a wire running from the the terminal marked battery on that black fuse box I took pic of to my house battery ?
Yes, you can try measuring contiuity across it and the positive side of the house battery. To be sure you should disconnect it at the fuse.
Maya.215 wrote:
Yes I'm going to get me a better charger Friday and I will look into getting a deep cycle battery Friday as well the battery I have now was pretty pricy for a battery so im going use it till it's dead lol but will have that deep cycle battery ready when it is time. Do u think that the battery would be to much to run off of the altinator if I were to hook it up to my rv battery so the house battery stays 100% while we are driving till we stop?
Yes I'm going to get me a better charger Friday and I will look into getting a deep cycle battery Friday as well the battery I have now was pretty pricy for a battery so im going use it till it's dead lol but will have that deep cycle battery ready when it is time. Do u think that the battery would be to much to run off of the altinator if I were to hook it up to my rv battery so the house battery stays 100% while we are driving till we stop?
There's ways of doing this without creating more problems than solutions. For now, I'd keep the coach and engine systems separate and just use a charger/maintainer for the coach/house battery.
BTW, the 6v deep cycle batteries used in forklifts are a good, reliable option for coach/house battery bank. A pair, wired in series (plus to minus) yields the 12v you need. (Supply and demand tends to keep the prices down versus 12v deep cycle batteries,)
Griff wrote:
Color-coding for residential and commercial 120/240VAC wiring is different from what little standards exist for motor vehicle wiring. (And both are often different from ABYC standards for boats.)
Color-coding for residential and commercial 120/240VAC wiring is different from what little standards exist for motor vehicle wiring. (And both are often different from ABYC standards for boats.)
Yes, I knew that but I assumed that since vehicles always use a black battery cable to ground that black was ground in general.
Well, I just found that that was an incorrect assumption. I went out to my RV (79 Fleetwood), and took off a light fixture. Well, the white wire goes to ground and the black is positive. So it seems this is "standard." Who dreams this stuff up? I guess I never really paid attention. My bad.
Oh, and then I looked at my house battery and there are three cables to the negative terminal--one black, one red, and one white! Ok, these don't look stock so who knows when that happened. I wonder why no purple?
Maya, make a note: White to negative, black to positive--unless it is a battery cable. Always check with a meter too.
Maybe on Tuesdays everything is different...
I keep forgetting to mention that you are going to need another maintainer for the engine battery.
Got the kingpins installed just fine, without too many issues, like trying to remember how to read a 0.0001" micrometer. (One measurement was off by 0.025" because I misread the micrometer ... but caught the error before I screwed everything up.)
Then, I discovered I had major problems with the (recently replaced) wheel seal that was allowing water to get at the (relatively new) wheel bearings. Have a new wheel seal -- that won't solve the actual problem -- but no new bearings. Plus, this is my only working vehicle and I live to far out of town to have parts delivered.
So, I'm going to have to patch everything back together so I can get all the parts I need and then redo most of the job over again very soon.