Chassis battery dead

[cajunjohn]

Hey Guys,
Puzzled! I put in a new chassis battery in September- Replaced old Champion 1560 with Interstate 8D. The battery indicated that it was maintenance free, and I was puzzled, because it had the same 6 battery caps as the previous battery. Well, I assumed (Yeah, I know the definition of a-s-s-u-m-e) that the battery was sealed and was INDEED maintenance free. Well, after a 3 week trip to Canada, we put the RV into storage with shore power connected, and whenI went 2 weeks ago to start the generator and run it an hour or two and perform a few other maintenance tasks, and lo and behold, the chassis battery was dead. Because I have a 1999 FDS, there is no boost, so I jumped the chassis battery off the house batteries. No problem....let it run for awhile to charge. Checked the water level and it was seriously low. Filled w distilled h2o and again put it into storage with shore power attached. Today, you guessed it; no charge to chassis battery again. What's my problem this time?

Thanks in advance for help/suggestions!

[cajunjohn]

Hey Guys,
Puzzled! I put in a new chassis battery in September- Replaced old Champion 1560 with Interstate 8D. The battery indicated that it was maintenance free, and I was puzzled, because it had the same 6 battery caps as the previous battery. Well, I assumed (Yeah, I know the definition of a-s-s-u-m-e) that the battery was sealed and was INDEED maintenance free. Well, after a 3 week trip to Canada, we put the RV into storage with shore power connected, and whenI went 2 weeks ago to start the generator and run it an hour or two and perform a few other maintenance tasks, and lo and behold, the chassis battery was dead. Because I have a 1999 FDS, there is no boost, so I jumped the chassis battery off the house batteries. No problem....let it run for awhile to charge. Checked the water level and it was seriously low. Filled w distilled h2o and again put it into storage with shore power attached. Today, you guessed it; no charge to chassis battery again. What's my problem this time?

Thanks in advance for help/suggestions!

[sdcyclist]

Hello John,

I'm not sure about the 1999 Alpines but newer rigs have an echo charger that will keep the chassis batteries charged when the house batts come to FLOAT. If you do not have an echo, they are inexpensive and easy to install.

sdcyclist

[EngineerMike]

How long was it in storage? If it boiled down & continued to try & charge for a long time, you may have killed the battery. The lower the electrolyte below the top of lead plates the higher chance of permanent damage to the battery if left that way over time.

This is a perfect battery type for HydroCaps that remake the off-gas back into H2O so you lose almost no water.

[Mike Gamble]

When my chassis batteries died, I discovered, through Mark Harrah, that there's a solenoid switch that connects the two battery sets together. It only closes to charge the chassis batteries when the voltage on the house batteries is above a certain point. However, in my case, the solenoid failed and simply needed to be replaced.

[takepride]

Cajun:

There are endless threads on this topic (charging) and related ones (caps, fillers, routines). Do a FIND and you'll find out more than you probably want. Once you understand how your particular charging system works, you will easily troubleshoot it. There is great input from many folks here. It sure helped me.

[Algoma]

John,
I guess you have the same set-up I have. The inverter/charger only charges the house battery. I added the echo-charger recently which now puts some of the charge current into the chassis battery. Some early coaches were fitted with the echo-charger but were wired incorrectly by WRV and were not charging the chassis battery as intended. If you do have one fitted check the wiring.