OK, Having started at the most recent posts in the Tech support area of the Forum, and so far have read every post back to page 43 or so regardless of whether it applied to my coach or not, I'm feeling significantly more confident in my systems knowledge. At least for a guy that has only owned his coach for a couple of months. I now feel I am at least knowledgeable enough to ask the right questions, and be fairly dangerous.
When I purchased the 2000 Beaver PT with the C-12, the young man that sold it to me didn't have a wealth of knowledge about the coach to share. Although an extremely nice person and I believe he was honest and sincere with me, most of the questions I had were answered with "um, I'm not sure" or " I don't know." He confided to me that the most he could tell me about the instrumentation and switches amounted to "that's the jake brake, and that's the cruise." Beyond these two things he offered that he "learned to never get in a hurry." while driving the coach. He never used the LP for fear of starting a fire, and always turned the House and Chassis battery disconnect switches to the "off" position when he put the coach away. He said the batteries would drain fairly quickly if he didn't.
On attempting to start the coach after a 2 week period of unattended/ unplugged/ and covered storage, I have experienced "dead" chassis batteries twice now, regardless of the position of the battery disconnect switches. I have discovered through reading posts and personal experimentation, that there are slow parasitic drains on the battery that happen regardless of the position of the disconnect switches, and that the gen set is started off the Chassis batteries (not the way I would have set it up) so that when the chassis batteries are dead, you aren't going to be able to start the generator to charge them. (exactly why I wouldn't have set it up that way.) Additionally, it appears that the generator prioritizes the house batteries over the chassis in the charging sequence. Also, a poor choice in my opinion. I would rather ensure that I could start the coach at all times and possibly use the alternator to charge the house batteries enough to start the generator (assuming the solar panels didn't already keep the house batteries at a sufficient charge state to do so).
While I was working in the coach over a period of a few days, I had it uncovered and the solar panels exposed to strong direct sunlight for at least 8 hours at a time. I also ran the generator for several hours at a time in order to run both A/Cs and keep the coach interior cool. At the end of the day, I made sure I disconnected the batteries. This worked fine until we had a few cloudy days in a row. One morning I was greeted with a chassis battery that wouldn't crank the engine, but did have enough juice to run the generator. I remembered reading about the boiling batteries issues some were experiencing, and checked mine. The chassis batteries are maintenance free, but the house batteries are not and upon inspection, were so low on water that the top 1/16" of the plates were exposed. I filled all 4 batteries with distilled water to a height just covering the tops of the plates in each cell by about 1/4". Then, I ran the generator all day (8+hours non-stop) and at the end of which, the Link 2000 showed both house and chassis batteries to have a full charge, 13.95 volts, and 13.10 respectively. I read in the Link manual that the batteries should be equalized once every 30 days, and since mine were showing a full charge now, I followed the procedure outlined in the manual and let them equalize for 5 hours.
NOW... both batteries show P100 for percentage of charge, the house batteries show 13.95 vdc BUT, the chassis batteries will NOT charge while the generator is running, and I can watch the voltage slowly drain from a high of 12.10 to an eventual 9.5.
The chassis batteries will show 12.10 vdc after charging for hours but the minute I try to crank the engine they drain very quickly down to about 9.5 vdc and will not start the coach.
Are my Chassis batteries fried, and is it as a result of something I did, or didn't do correctly?
If I have to replace the chassis batteries, which size and brand should I be looking for?
If you made it this far in my post, THANK YOU! You are a real dedicated trooper!
