Dead Batteries

[Fritzo]

Hi All... I have an '05 Allegro Bus. Had my coach parked at a 30 amp site for the Summer. Power had gone off and the house batteries were drained. Couldn't stay to charge them there.

Drove an hour with the generator on and parked in a storage area. No access to power. Tried to start the generator and it won't make a sound

Does the generator start off the house battries? Can I use my car to jump the house batteries to get the generator going?

Thanks in Advance................Fritz

[Fritzo]

Hi All... I have an '05 Allegro Bus. Had my coach parked at a 30 amp site for the Summer. Power had gone off and the house batteries were drained. Couldn't stay to charge them there.

Drove an hour with the generator on and parked in a storage area. No access to power. Tried to start the generator and it won't make a sound

Does the generator start off the house battries? Can I use my car to jump the house batteries to get the generator going?

Thanks in Advance................Fritz

[AFChap]

Yes, the generator is normally set up to start off the house batteries (how did you get it started to run it for an hour while driving??).

You shouldn't need a jump. You should have a "battery boost" or "aux start" or "mom" switch on the dash. Holding that switch down will tie the two battery banks together to allow you to start the engine when the chassis batteries are low, or start the generator when the house batteries are low. When my house batteries died really dead, I had to continue holding the switch down for about a minute after starting the generator before it would keep running (presumably until it started genning power to the charger). If I let off the swith immediately, the generator would die.

Running the generator for an hour didn't charge the house batteries enough for you to start it? ...sounds like the batteries could be bad.

[Gary RVRoamer]

Agree with Paul - your batteries are probably either low of water or totally shot if they did not charge enough to start the genset after an hour. Or, possibly, they were so low that the charger thought they were shorted and shut down. The Xantrex chargers will do that, for example, if the battery voltage is too low (below about 10v, I think).