# Battery Charge



## campingtom170 (Apr 26, 2004)

Happy New Year to one and ALL,

A little help from all you electrical guys would be appreciated.

During the holidays our Outback became a temporary bedroom for some of our visiting family. I hooked it up to shore power and water. After disconnecting the power I was cleaning up inside the trailer while using only the battery power.

I noticed that the lights seemed a little dim. I checked the battery voltage on the moniter and it showed that the battery was at 3/4 power. I thought that this was unusual. I expected, that since it had been connected to shore power for the past several days, that the converter whould have charged the batteries to full capacity.

I checked the fluid level in both batteries and found it to be low but not dry. I filled all the cells and checked both with a voltmeter. Both batteries read 12.8v.

Now I don't know what to check next. I don't know if one or both of the batteries are not accepting a charge, if the converter is not charging or if it someting else.

Any and all ideas are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom sunny


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## hatcityhosehauler (Feb 13, 2004)

If you have a separate battery charger, I would suggest putting both batteries on that to see if they are charging properly. I know the converter/charger is not the best for deep cycle charging those batteries.

Tim


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## JohnL (Sep 2, 2004)

If you are measuring 12.8 volts at the battery with a fairly good quality volt meter, your batteries are fully charged. A couple of things are going on here. The converter runs at a higher voltage in order to push a charge into the batteries. The lights will be brighter with the trailer plugged into shore power. Also, when you have several lights on, enough of a voltage drop occurs in the line from the battery to the distribution panel in the converter, that the battery gauge will show less than full charge. To be accurate, voltage monitors need to be hooked up with a separate fused lead, directly to the battery. In that way they can measure voltage at the battery accurately when is under load. In other words......everything is normal.


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## CamperAndy (Aug 26, 2004)

I agree with JohnL, everything is normal. The battery meter in the Outback does not really report a very good status on the Battery level. It will normally drop off 100% as soon as you put the first bit of load on the battery.


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## z-family (Oct 2, 2004)




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## campingtom170 (Apr 26, 2004)

Thanks everybody,

When I checked the monitor today, with no load, the monitor in the trailer showed a full charge. I also have a battery cut off installed. the cut off also has a monitor that gives a digital reading of battery power. That meter reads 12.9v, so I am guessing that all is well.

Thanks for the help,

Tom

p.s. the meter that I use is a Wavetek Model DM2, Digital Multimeter. Maybe a thread about what meter you use and how it works for you would not be a bad idea. sunny


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