Converter/Charger Problem

Kazoo Tom · 11-25-2006, 06:41 PM

Went out to start the motorhome about a week ago and found the battery too low to start. I have a Trik-L-Start installed, so the house batteries were also too low to start the engine. Plugged in to house power at home. My unit has a 45 amp Magnatek converter/charger mounted on the floor below the stove. Power is clearly getting through the unit as all 12 volt items work properly, but the charger section is not charging. There are two external 12 volt fuses on the unit and both have been checked and are good.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Also, any suggestions for a replacement would be welcomed.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Kazoo Tom · 11-25-2006, 06:41 PM

Went out to start the motorhome about a week ago and found the battery too low to start. I have a Trik-L-Start installed, so the house batteries were also too low to start the engine. Plugged in to house power at home. My unit has a 45 amp Magnatek converter/charger mounted on the floor below the stove. Power is clearly getting through the unit as all 12 volt items work properly, but the charger section is not charging. There are two external 12 volt fuses on the unit and both have been checked and are good.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Also, any suggestions for a replacement would be welcomed.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Stevegd007 · 11-25-2006, 08:34 PM

I found my house battery dead on morning. An the converter did not put a charge back on the batteries. Found both batteries DOA with no fluid. Forget to check the level on the batteries.

So I put fluid back in and guess what batteries would still not hold a charge. I then found that the 110v fuse on the fuse panel had triped for the converter. Now with some new house batteries and a fuse that kept triping, I could not get any power into the coach. I kept reseting the trip fuse, over and over, it finally took.

And I had power!

Check the fluid in all your batteries. Check your 110 trip breakers, for the converter. Check for any 12V drain. Like the radio or gas leak dector. I found that the converter will not charge dead batteries and it triped the breaker when it tried to charge dead batteries for too long a time.

Hope this may help some.

RV Wizard · 11-26-2006, 02:11 AM

Tom, like Steve has said that if the batteries are truley dead, ie shorted cell the charger will not be functional. If you can put a volt meter on the output of the charger with the batteries disconnected from it and you read an output of 13.8 or so the the charger is ok the battery banks are the problem. Service the batteries and retry. If however you get no voltage output from the charger you have a bad charger. Good luck and let us know what you find.

Kazoo Tom · 11-26-2006, 05:24 AM

Thank you both for your suggestions. The batteries were very dead, but I did not check the fluid level. I will do that later today. I did disconnect the starting battery and have it recharged so I can at least start the motor.

I checked all the breakers I could find and all are still on and seem to be ok. I wil check the fluid level of the coach batteries and charge them up with a stand alone charger and see if that helps.

Somewhere there is a serious drain on the batteries. I think it may be the electric step which has been acting funny for a bit. The batteries will drain in less than a week. I think that the trik-l-start allowed the coach batteries to drain in its effort to keep the starting battery charged.

Stevegd007 · 11-26-2006, 10:49 AM

Tom,
Your electric step is powered off the engine battery. If the step is acting funny maybe this is caused by a voltage drop on the engine battery as it lost power working with the trik-l-start. The step would not work as quick as normal with a loss of voltage on the engine battery. Reading the Voyage manual (new version of your Brave) I see that it is not a good idea to keep shore power on the coach all the time. Plus you should keep the house batteries off to the coach when not using the coach. I think this is where I went wrong, as I boiled off all the battery fluid cause I was keeping shore power to the coach all the time, even when stored in the yard and not being used.

Now with new house batteries, fully charged, all power is restored and the converter seems to be doing ok.

Let us know if your coach battery has fluid.

Good luck.....keep smiling & happy trails

dstinch · 11-26-2006, 11:01 AM

mine went out its been in shop for that and ats and door window had fog in it under war. 6 weeks now!ppl motorhomes has converter for $219. i'll fix myself next time. Don

DonavonP · 11-26-2006, 12:32 PM

My understanding of the Trik L Start is that it robs Peter to pay Paul. If your MH is not plugged into a 120 volt power source then all of your batteries go dead.

I use an 18 ga. wire with clips to keep my chassis battery charged up. My MH is plugged into 120 volt power all the time. I'm going to permanently install a wire with a 10 amp blade fuse so when I forget to disconnect the wire and start the machine - the fuse will blow if it needs to.

Kazoo Tom · 11-26-2006, 05:20 PM

It is tru that the trik-l-start does pull from the coach batteries to charge the starting battery. The charger, when working, does not charge the starting battery, so the Trik-L-Start allows both banks to receive a charge when plugged in.

I checked the fluid in the batteries today and found all to be ok. The coach batteries were also severly discharged. I disconnected the house batteries and used my charger on them to bring them up a bit.

I noticed that before I started this operation the trik-l-start light was not lit. As soon as I disconnected the batteries the light lit up. I have it connected across the solenoid in the front of the chassis. Somehow 12 volt power is getting to the solenoid, even when the battery is not connected.

I am still not sure if the converter/charger is actually charging. I can't hear a hum, but the cooling fan is not running. Don't know if it is controlled by a thermostat, it is rather cool here.