Chassis Battery keeps draining

[ddw1949]

Folks,
If you have any suggestions I would greatly appreciate reading them regarding my chassis battery continuously draining. After sitting in the Driveway for a couple of weeks the chassis battery goes dead. I have had it to a Certified Workhorse Servicer and he said the battery tester read that the battery needed replaced. Done that!! Battery dead again!

Is there something draining this chassis battery that you may have discovered in the past?

2009 Canyon Star Newmar
Workhorse Chassis
8100

[max49]

I assume you are not plugged into shore power. How about the house batteries? Are they discharging also? If so maybe the isolator or solenoid is not separating them when the ignition is off. Can you start the MH with the 'emergency' button?
Not much help here as to why your battery is draining but until you find the cause, you should disconnect it if you can't keep it charging. Allowing the starting battery to go dead is not good for it.

[DriVer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ddw1949 Is there something draining this chassis battery that you may have discovered in the past?

ddw1949, Congratulations and welcome to iRV2.com.

I am of the opinion that you are experiencing a parasitic drain on your battery. There are a number of things to check one being steps I was told to see if those have been turned OFF. The IP and computers are constantly live and they will continue to require small amounts of power from the battery. Cumulatively over the period of a few weeks that could pull your battery down.

I use a small device called a Battery-Minder which applies an intelligent float charge to the automotive battery and I have been always ready to start for the past many years I have been using the device.

[MonacoMama]

Congrats on your new rig! ..and welcome to iRV2!!
You may need to put an Echo-Charger or a something similar on your rig. Many coaches will not charge both chassis and house batteries.

We do hope you visit & post often!

[SideRoads]

Same problem,,,,easiest solution for me was a battery disconnect,,,,,no more problems....

[Bigdaddy]

I had the same problem. Found out it was the radio. Now when I park the MH, I remove the face plate on the radio. No more battery drain.

[Bob (WA0MQE)]

Did your coach come with a solar charger for the chassis battery? As mentioned above our coaches, including the chassis, have parisitic loads that constantly put demand on the battery. I guess this is why many of them have a small solar panel connected directly to the chassis battery at all times.

The easiest thing is to connect a digital meter (one that can monitor at least 10 amps) in series with the battery and see how many amps is being discharged from the battery. Normally I wouldn't think it should draw more then 1-amp or so. If it's drawing say 4, 5 or more amps then something's drawing more then it should. You'd need to disconnect things one at a time to determine what it is.

[Clay L]

Mine discharges in about three weeks and has since it was new. There is about a 0.150 amp draw. The draw is due to the keep alive current needed by such things as the engine computer, transmission computer and I believe the ABS system.

Like Driver I use a "BatteryMinder" to supply a float charge. It can be left connected all the time. The drawback is that it only works when you are connected to shore power.

There is a unit called a "BatteryTender" that I understand supplies a float charge and is connected to the house batteries. The downside of it is that over time it will draw down the house batteries.

[wa8yxm]

2 weeks on a starting battery without the engine running is a LONG time.. My car can suck it's battery (About the same size no less) down in half that time or less.

My suggestion is a battey minder.. Now there are some options here

If your motor home has a nice 3-stage converter (I and I suspect it does but post the make and model to be sure) and a good Battery Control system (Toss up here so post) then just plug in,, you need only around 10 amps tops so a 12ga extension cord from Sears/K-mart (I like the outlet end better than I do other cords) and the proper 15 to whatever adapter will do you well..

I actually built a special adapter so I can plug in just the converter if I wish.

Now, This works ONLY if the house converter is a proper 3-stage and if the battery control system allows house charging of the chassis battery (mine does)

If it does not then you have to make a choice

Again if you have a good 3-stage converter... A Trick-L-Start is a good option, it adds the "missing" feature of house charging of chassis battery, or the Xantrex Echo Charge (A bit more expensive but otherwise the same)

If you don't wish to power up the whole house, or if your hose converter is a single stage like a magnetek 6300... A BatteryMINDer or battery Tender type product (Basically competing brands) will do the job just fine

These are low-rate (1-4 amp usually) 2-stage converters (Absorption/float, at single digit max output rates they simply don't do Bulk)

I use one on my car.. For reasons stated at the top of this post.

[gasser 38]

you need to put a meter on it and see what the draw is in amps a coule of weeks on a new fully charged battery does not seem normal

[ddw1949]

May i ask where you purchased your battery minder?

[Luv2go]

ddw1949: You've gotten a lot of good advice from other members, here's my point of view as a 2008 Canyon Star owner:

The 2009 Canyon Star (at least the ones I looked at in October) has a BIRD which will connect your coach batteries and chassis batteries together if either is charging (for details on operation, have a look at this document: http://intellitec.com/PDF/5300362.100.pdf).

So, if the coach is plugged in and the coach battery disconnect is left on, your chassis battery will be being charged. I had two isolator relays go bad, this keeps this charging from taking place.

We keep our coach plugged in all the time and have no trouble keeping the batteries charged using the BIRD and the coach converter/charger, now that the relay is working reliably, so if you are keeping the coach plugged in I'd suspect the BIRD or the isolator relay. These should be located on the firewall above the radiator on your coach.

Also, your coach has a small solar panel (5W) hooked to the chassis battery which is supposed to keep the battery charged.

The solar panel is theoretically capable of 0.4A charging current, but I'd expect half that practically speaking. With the cloudy days and precipitation we've been having in NC it will probably not be enough to keep the battery charged.

I noticed you are located in coastal NC. We had our warranty work done at Howard RV in Wilmington and recommend them highly. I'm not sure they still service Newmar under warranty as he dropped their line recently (their blog mentions downsizing as a result of the economy), however you can give them a call (Bill or John) if you'd like to. BTW, John did not believe that the BIRD would charge chassis battery from coach converter, but I may have convinced him with the above document.

Good Luck!
Stewart

[DriVer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ddw1949 May i ask where you purchased your battery minder?

Yes indeed. The battery-Minder was purchased from www.rvupgrades.com. Ask for our good friend Bill and introduce yourself. Tell him Mike sent ya! (DriVer)

[UFO Pilot]

My solution was expensive but it seems to be working. When I put the RV in storage and turned both battery disconnects off, the batteries would still be dead in 2 to 3 weeks. While in Quartzsite I had a 130 watt solar panel installed. The RV has been in storage for 3 weeks with the battery disconnects untouched. We have had almost zero sunlight since then. I went to the Coach today and it fired right up.

As I said at the start, expensive but the problem seems to be fixed.