chassis battery

[nhjones]

morning all. I am not able to determine if the chassis battery on my 2017 QRA38 open road RED receives a charge when on shore power. Neither the Tiffin manual or product manuals indicate this. Some bloggers believe that the chassis bztt. is charged from the pedestal. Any wisdom out there?

[Lt Dan]

If I'm not mistaken, Tiffin stopped putting a chassis trickle charger on Open Road and RED models after 2016. The easy way to check is monitor the battery voltage. If it drops below 12.5 volts, then there is no charger. A small trickle charger is easy to install, or an Amp-L-Start to merge the two battery banks will work great as well.
https://www.rvupgradestore.com/15-Am...mp-l-start.htm

[DRM901]

My trickle charger (2014 Allegro Bus) was right above the chassis batteries.

When it died, and took the batteries with it - twice, I replaced it with a Blue Sea ACR. Works great.

[RH_RVer]

Just thinking out loud here - my 2018 Phaeton doesn’t charge the chassis batteries. However, when they get below 11.4 volts, some control system will balance the voltage with my House batteries, which is on a charger. I think it’s the Spider System that does it but there may be a subsystem it controls that actually does the work.

Just a thought….

[RH_RVer]

Oh, Shucks. I just saw that Lt Dan replied already. He’s the one who told me about the chassis/house balancing and he knows much more about this than I. So…to quote Roseanne Rosanadana, NEVERMIND! (Who remembers her?!?!)

[thegats1]

I can't speak for the Open Road, but my 2019 Red 340 did not have a battery maintainer on it when I bought it (new from dealer). In Red Bay when I mentioned it the person writing up my warranty list told me they started putting them on Red's after my model year (2019). So, while I was there they installed one for free. I'm not sure how factual this is regarding Red's, but this is what he told me.

[bneumann]

Most likely dealer bs ..... contact Tiffin with your VIN# & you should get proper reply..