Community Forums

Chargerman · 03-24-2022, 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Knight40PDQ

Chargerman,
Interstate advised me to leave them connected to a smart charger/maintainer. In this case, that means the inverter/converter. They reasoned that fluid loss would be less significant than the loss of charge during a 6-7 month unattended storage. I will find out which approach is more right because I have already parked it and left the state. Thanks for the advice!

I understand that you have already left your Coach and I am sure it will be fine but whenever I leave my coach for the Winter I don't like to leave it plugged in. I just feel more comfortable with no power to the coach and not having electronics under power unnecessarily for months seems like it will extend their life. Therefore, I remove the main cables from the batteries. When I return 5 months later I first put a charger on each battery individually and every time they all show 94-96% charged when the charger is first put on. I'm not saying one way is better than the other, just what I do and why.

moisheh · 03-24-2022, 04:52 PM

I can tell you my experience with leaving a vehicle unattended. If you have special battery caps that do not allow gases to escape you are good for 6 months. But I would not use your s mart charger. But a battery maintainer. I usually remove the batteries from the unit. If something goes wrong either the batteries will cook or there could be a fire. The caps are called water misers. They also prevent a lot of corrosion. I had 6 brand new 6 volts in our Bluebird. They were one year old. I removed the batteries and had an expensive maintainer that can handle 4 12 volts. I used an industrial timer to operate the maintainer twice a week. First year worked great. But we left in Mexico in March of 2020 and due to the borders being closed could not return until November ,2021. batteries were fried. I think a surge caused the timer to not shut off.. If you were gone for 4 months I would say go for it.