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Ppalacios · 03-20-2017, 06:56 AM

First post so bear with me. My father let my family borrow his e-trek. We have been reading the manual and practicing how to use it out in the driveway. Recently I turned everything on like I was going to spend the night in it. The inverter panel was positioned to power save mode, the battery disconnect switch was illuminated. The panel appeared to show the shore power was charging the batteries. I come out this morning and hear an alarm. I open the sliding door and the whole place smells of rotten eggs. Help me iRV2, you're my only hope.

harryn · 03-20-2017, 10:22 AM

I am speculating here, so take it FWIW.

Step one when there is an odor is to ventilate and get the odor out. Maybe shut down all power and attachments.

Check the frig to see if that is the source of the odor, or where it might be coming from. That will help narrow things a lot. It might actually be food odor.

Rotten eggs smell could potentially come from the exhaust if your fuel is not ULSD. (ultra low sulfur diesel). It doesn't take all that much sulfur to smell like rotten eggs.

If the actual odor is "burnt wire smell", that is usually an over heated wire, connection that came loose, transformer, inverter, etc.

Inverter power saver mode is a bit funny. It puts the inverter in a stand by mode that sort of "hunts" for loads. If the load demand is too low, it won't turn to "on" and power anything - just sits there "in standby" - nearly off. If you are on shore power, I would not think that power saver mode would be normal - not sure.

If it really is rotten egg smell (H2S), use some caution. The human nose is remarkably sensitive to this gas - initially, but after just a few minutes, it paralyzes the nerves in your nose and you can't smell it anymore. That is why people are over come and die from very low concentrations - they think the odor is gone because they can't smell it anymore.

I think that the e-treck has Li batteries. If it had lead acid batteries, I would have recommended checking to make sure that the battery exhaust tube is attached and vented to the outside.

Ppalacios · 03-21-2017, 05:59 AM

After some digging it looks like one of the batteries could potentially be dead and was getting an overcharge thus boiling sulfuric acid. (The batteries are AGMs) I've taken it to a repair shop but now the question becomes how the heck do you access the batteries? Everything I've seen has them below the floor at the wheel wells. Do they have to take apart the entire interior to access? Seems like a nice design flaw to me. They had to know this type of thing could happen.

harryn · 03-22-2017, 01:08 PM

Battery access seems to depend somewhat on model year and what chassis it is built on. Some of their vans are built on sprinters, some not.

Perhaps post some more details of exactly which year and model you have.

I did some on-line searching and it sounds like some batteries are accessed via a side compartment (very deep) and as you mentioned, some are located in the wheel well area.

Assuming that the batteries are in the wheel well location, then the most common setup is a hatch door from inside. Perhaps crawl under neath and see if there is an access from there.