Update on WFCO 8955 replaced with PD Wildkat

[Bigfin]

Howdy...Just got back from a nearly two week winter outing in the soggy NW. In past trips I have had to run the genny for 2-4 hours a day when the sun wasn't shinning enough to get through the night with +50% battery capacity. The PD 4655 MBA changed all of that, in a really good way! On this trip around the Olympic National Forest, if I did not have confidence of getting through the night of +- freezing temps, with the furnace keeping the sleeping temps @ 63 degrees, I manually boosted the Wildkat converter and within 1/2-3/4 hour had a fully charged battery. Nirvana! During the entire trip I never had less than 60% battery capacity.

One of the absolute high points was staying in the Hoh river valley NP campground, and having the entire campground to ourselves and the elk.

[ttavasc]

We've had similar results from the PD4655VL that we swapped the WFCO out for back in 2020. Glad to hear it is doing well for you. It's been a while since we've been over to the Olympics but we have a few days planned at the Hoh River Campground in late August - unfortunately I'm sure it won't be almost empty......

[DavidEM]

Yes, I did the same thing and swapped my WFCO for a PD 8160CV. It immediately upped the charging amperage. That WFCO converter is truly a POS.

Years and years ago we stayed at probably the same NP campground in the Ho valley. Our site was within 100' of the river and we watched moose cross it late in the day. It rains a bunch there though.

David

[Bigfin]

Originally Posted by DavidEM

Yes, I did the same thing and swapped my WFCO for a PD 8160CV. It immediately upped the charging amperage. That WFCO converter is truly a POS.

Years and years ago we stayed at probably the same NP campground in the Ho valley. Our site was within 100' of the river and we watched moose cross it late in the day. It rains a bunch there though.

David

Yep, rain forests will do that...Oh, but the moss!...

[spogdog]

Originally Posted by Bigfin

Howdy...Just got back from a nearly two week winter outing in the soggy NW. In past trips I have had to run the genny for 2-4 hours a day when the sun wasn't shinning enough to get through the night with +50% battery capacity. The PD 4655 MBA changed all of that, in a really good way! On this trip around the Olympic National Forest, if I did not have confidence of getting through the night of +- freezing temps, with the furnace keeping the sleeping temps @ 63 degrees, I manually boosted the Wildkat converter and within 1/2-3/4 hour had a fully charged battery. Nirvana! During the entire trip I never had less than 60% battery capacity.

One of the absolute high points was staying in the Hoh river valley NP campground, and having the entire campground to ourselves and the elk.

I did the same with the WFCO. Would love to go to the Hoh. Looked at the campsite and they all look a little small. Claim that many would require parking the TV at the overflow. Is that what you observed?

[ttavasc]

Originally Posted by spogdog

I did the same with the WFCO. Would love to go to the Hoh. Looked at the campsite and they all look a little small. Claim that many would require parking the TV at the overflow. Is that what you observed?

It looks to me like that is the case. When I was making our reservation for August it only showed me 8 sites out of 72 that we could fit both the truck and trailer in to. I apply a filter on recreation.gov for length that includes both truck and trailer - which is 50 feet in our case - and that generally does a good job of showing me any sites where I should be able to have both the truck and trailer. If you don't set a check-in/check-out date it should show the list of all campsites that meet the filter criteria regardless of availability.

[Bigfin]

Originally Posted by spogdog

I did the same with the WFCO. Would love to go to the Hoh. Looked at the campsite and they all look a little small. Claim that many would require parking the TV at the overflow. Is that what you observed?

There were numerous sites that I could have fit into, including the pull through next to the river that we selected. Secret is to go off season when all sites are first come, first served. Didn't rain more than a few drops when we were there and sunny often, especially in the afternoon. Never booked once during our trip, stayed at state, county and national parks. Being set up for dry camping has its advantages...

[Vintage465]

Great info, thanks! A PD is in the future plans for my set up too. I had the opportunity to run a #2 conductor from the J-box at the front of the coach to the converter location when I had the belly material off. This way I will lose even less of the precious charge amps when I get the PD installed. It's kinda far back on the list of real important things to do since we never actually run a genny. Our solar takes care of all our needs..........except in the "rainy redwoods" of Northern California. So, in that circumstance or an emergency I want to be completely prepared!

[Dave Pelletier]

Originally Posted by Bigfin

Howdy...Just got back from a nearly two week winter outing in the soggy NW. In past trips I have had to run the genny for 2-4 hours a day when the sun wasn't shinning enough to get through the night with +50% battery capacity. The PD 4655 MBA changed all of that, in a really good way! On this trip around the Olympic National Forest, if I did not have confidence of getting through the night of +- freezing temps, with the furnace keeping the sleeping temps @ 63 degrees, I manually boosted the Wildkat converter and within 1/2-3/4 hour had a fully charged battery. Nirvana! During the entire trip I never had less than 60% battery capacity.

One of the absolute high points was staying in the Hoh river valley NP campground, and having the entire campground to ourselves and the elk.

I'm sorry; I'm a bit confused - what do you mean "manually boosted"? your converter/charger only charges the batteries when you are plugged into shore power or a generator and if you have shore power, you wouldn't be concerned about battery levels Do you mean you only had to run the generator for 30 - 45 minutes vs. 2-4 hours?

Thanks,
Dave

[Bigfin]

Originally Posted by Dave Pelletier

I'm sorry; I'm a bit confused - what do you mean "manually boosted"? your converter/charger only charges the batteries when you are plugged into shore power or a generator and if you have shore power, you wouldn't be concerned about battery levels Do you mean you only had to run the generator for 30 - 45 minutes vs. 2-4 hours?

Thanks,
Dave

The PD wildkat has the ability (by way of a button on the board or an included remote) to manually change charge modes. With the genny running and the Wildkat set in "boost mode" the charge rate is rapid and at 14.4 volts up to 90% of full battery charge. So yes, I only needed to run the genny for 30-45 minutes vs...

[ttavasc]

Originally Posted by Dave Pelletier

I'm sorry; I'm a bit confused - what do you mean "manually boosted"? your converter/charger only charges the batteries when you are plugged into shore power or a generator and if you have shore power, you wouldn't be concerned about battery levels Do you mean you only had to run the generator for 30 - 45 minutes vs. 2-4 hours?

Thanks,
Dave

Originally Posted by Bigfin

The PD wildkat has the ability (by way of a button on the board or an included remote) to manually change charge modes. With the genny running and the Wildkat set in "boost mode" the charge rate is rapid and at 14.4 volts up to 90% of full battery charge. So yes, I only needed to run the genny for 30-45 minutes vs...

Dave Pelletier - not sure what year your 21RBS is but if it is new enough to come with the Progressive Dynamics power center instead of the WFCO then you should have this same capability as it is part of Progressive's "Charge Wizard" feature. I thought that they switched to the PD power center sometime in 2020 as my 2019 still had the WFCO.

If you do have the PD power center there should be a tiny blue button on the 12V distribution board along with a flashing green LED that indicates which stage of charging the charge wizard is in. Pushing the blue button will allow you to override the current charge stage as Bigfin described.

Here is a link to another post where I posted an annotated picture of the 12V distribution board with the Charge Wizard button identified as well as a picture of the optional remote.

And here is a link to the info page for the Charge Wizard on Progressive Dynamics website. There is a button at the bottom of the page that will load a PDF document with the specifics of how to interpret the LED and use the button to override the current charge stage if desired.

[Dave Pelletier]

Thank you both; I figured it was just a better charge with the new converter when the generator was running. Mine is a 2020 and does have the PD converter. I was aware that it had the different charge profiles but was unaware that I had to do anything manually....I thought it was all automatic. Time to read more, I guess! ����

[ttavasc]

Originally Posted by Dave Pelletier

Thank you both; I figured it was just a better charge with the new converter when the generator was running. Mine is a 2020 and does have the PD converter. I was aware that it had the different charge profiles but was unaware that I had to do anything manually....I thought it was all automatic. Time to read more, I guess! ����

You don't have to do anything manually, however, according to Progressive Dynamics the 14.4v boost mode doesn't kick in automatically until the battery is at 11.9VDC. I couldn't find this level of detail in the docs so I emailed support for the clarification. The manual override via the charge wizard button or remote pendant allows you to kick in the boost mode on-demand which is useful if you are moderately discharged but not down to the level where it would kick in automatically.

[Dave Pelletier]

That makes perfect sense; thank you.
If you are temporarily running a generator to get some charge into the batteries in the shortest amount of time, then pushing the override button on the converter would optimize charging if the batteries weren't already low enough to kick it to max charge?....sound right?