Any one install one of these?
AMP-L-START Starting Battery Charger/Maintainer - Overview Page (http://www.lslproducts.net/ALS_Overview_Page.html)
Amp L Start & Trik L Start are both nice products from LSL that try to do the same thing. Trik is simple diode based and has been and still is the #1 choice of keeping start battery under charge. LSL much later developed Amp which is a relay based circuit board with voltage sense control.
I have the trik-l-start 5amp unit. It works great and is easy to install.
Mark
I installed one last winter, it works great and only takes minutes to install
Highly recommend to have some sort of automatic charging of the chassis batteries. I considered the lower power version of this, but used to use an ac powered device plugged into the engine heater outlet under the bed.
That all changed when I replaced the isolator with a Blue Sea SI-ACR, a voltage sensing relay that connects both banks togethe through a relay ( rated at 210A intermittent ) whenever either back is being charged.
I made this change when I added solar, and have never suffered low chassis batteries since.
Voltage sensing combiners have issues when batteries are hot (which is often) and battery-charger lowers float to around 13 volts, which is often below voltage sensing 'turn on' point, keeping start battery bank without a charge. We have experimented with two voltage sensing combiners and decided to revert back to Trik L Start, and we continue to be pleased with Trik L Start.
Another problem we had with voltage sense combiners is when the relay was 'turned on' with house and start banks combined during an engine start, which momentarily also lowered house battery voltage. Trik L Start prevents voltage-lowering starting loads from affecting house bank.
Guess I'll get a Trikl- charge. TX.
I have been using the Blue Sea SI-ACR for three years, and haven't had any issues.
If the batteries happen to be combined because the AC charger has been charging the house batteries, then both banks will be fully charged when I start the engine. If the combining relay is closed (not due to the AC charger since I unplug before starting, but maybe from solar), the starter will get the bulk of it's current from the chassis batteries for the simple reason of a shorter cable run, leaving little drag on the house batteries. And besides, I usually hit the boost switch before starting, which is the same thing.
Tom, happy to hear you have had good luck with Blue Sea SI-ACR. It was our first choice and we worked with it for several months, even with Blue Sea support.
We had start issues with our Allison ECM getting reduced voltage when ACR was energized during cranking, so we took advantage of the 'start isolation' & LED features connecting a wire to aux-start solenoid and LED inside coach.
We liked the ACR but when we saw the LED off so much during hot weather indicating no combining, it just seemed that our old stand-by Trik L Start was a simple device that just did the job for us.
So ACR is in the spare parts box and we have our 2nd Trik L Start in service now for several years.
Voltage sensing has the advantage of no diode voltage loss, but introduces issues during hot weather gel battery float charging.
We also tried a different brand voltage sense that even had adjustable combine / disconnect voltage settings, but just gave up and fell back on trusty Trik L Start.
I have noticed recently that the combiner does not sense the low power from our solar and combine the chassis battery.
So I manually combined them today. Dash cigarette lighter went from 11.8 to 12.4 when the combiner was engaged.
I used the magnum auto combiner for several years. By mistake I left the headlights on till the spiral wound engine batteries were dead.
The resulting charge rate exceeded the units fuse capacity and popped the fuse. No cross charging.
The 500 amp combiner has no such limits
Barry and Cindy: Thanks for the info.
My understanding of my 500 amp combiner is that in auto mode it disconnects the house batteries
My guru mentioned that the combined batteries covered up bad chassis batteries some times.
Probably why the current unit auto disconnects the house batteries during starting