battery problems

[cblong]

so this morning everything worked flawlessly no problems this afternoon not so much. so the back story. I went and got our camper two days ago and hooked it up to the plug in our garage. I haven't even de winterized it yet. I went to the fuse box and switched off the breakers for the AC and the water heater I didn't want to keep popping the breaker in the house by turning on to many things. but I did make sure the main and the converter power was on. Today at about noon I noticed that one of the fuses was burnt out for the front cap light. no biggie i put a new one in and went about my day running errands when I got back the damn propane alarm was beeping so i started to check the battery I know there couldn't be a leak because the propane was shut off. I go and sure enough the battery was dead. I had a portable jump starter so I hooked it up direct to the wires and pulled in the slides and put a charger onto the battery. when I went inside to check the converter I can usually hear a fan blowing but there wasn't one. so my question Is. is my converter blown or what could be going on. and how can I check to see if it is. thanks

[chuckster57]

Depending on what converter you have, there is probably one or two fuses where the charge lines from the converter go to the battery.

If the battery was allowed to fully discharge in storage, I would disconnect it from the coach, charge it for an hour using the jump charger. Then before you hook it back to the trailer, check it with a volt meter and if available a load tester. I have seen batteries that have fully discharged, not take a charge.

[Pull Toy]

1. Check the A/C breakers, usually in the same panel as the D/C fuses. Also check the outlet that supplies the inverter. Quick, safe, and easy way ... plug a night lite into the outlet that powers the inverter. If there is power to the outlet, check for a reset button on the inverter. Also check any GFI'd outlets for a tripped condition. Quite often the bathroom outlet also wires to the outside outlets, and maybe even the utility ones in the basement too. Even if your battery is stone cold dead, you should be able to find 12v d.c. at the battery terminals. Another way to check your inverter is to turn your r/v radio on to an a.m. station, if you lift off the neg. battery terminal, the radio will sound like an orbital sander. Even a dead battery will act as a condenser "noise choke in C.B. slang" for the a/c signal of the "working" inverter.

2. Check to see if your rig has a battery cut off switch,(usually bright red, bulkhead mounted, and near the battery) and check that it in the operate position. From personal experience, if it is the plastic key type, set it "off or on", then remove the key and tether it to the immediate area with weatherproof zip ties or lanyard, so that it doesn't wander.

3. Remove the battery from any load, and charge it overnight, after making sure that the cells are full of distilled water. Leave the caps off while charging at 3 amps., and no smoking near the battery. If it holds a charge, have it stress tested at your local auto supply store. Remember to kill power to the inverter while the battery is out of the circuit.

Good luck, hope this helps!

[cblong]

ok I tore into things Im going to charge the battery tonight and take it down to get fixed tomorrow. I did check the two fuses on the front of the converter and one is burnt up. all the camping places are closed until monday so I'm going to have to wait until then and hope they have 35 amp blade fuses. I checked the auto parts stores since they were still open and no 35 amp fuses at all. Im just wondering now why the fuse popped. maybe when I put in that new 15 mp fuse for the nose cap light i fiddled around too much and caused a short. hmm

[chuckster57]

We use 40A without any issues. I have found over the years of wrenching, completely dead batteries don't do well with a 13 volt high amp jolt. My automatic charger will reduce voltage and amps until the battery will accept 12V