After an exhaustive (and expensive) search for my first MH, I am very excited to now be an "official" member of the Foreforum community. Thanks to MOT for finding a one-owner trade that was the first coach (out of many) which was actually cleaner and better taken care of then advertised.
I'm a few years away from being able to consider full-timing, but have plans to do a lot of tailgating at my alma mater, Texas A&M University. Hoping that there are other Aggies on the forum who do the same.
This is my very first MH, so I won't have answers for several months, but look forward to continuing to read and learn from all of the gracious owners on this board who are quick to give insight, lessons learned, best practices to those like me, who didn't know until yesterday how to start the generator.
Congrats and Welcome. If you haven't already discovered it, reading every applicable (to your coach) entry on the beamalarm.com Motorhome Technical Help page should be your highest priority. Once you have plowed through that weighty tome, you will be more knowledgeable than 98% of all SOB (Some Other Brand) motorhome owners. Have fun with your new ride!
Foretravel Motorhome technical help and information links (http://beamalarm.com/foretravel-links/foretravel-technical-help.html)
Welcome aboard, your in for a treat.
Cheers
Chris
Forum ;-)
Finished the sentence with an even better resource (and, along with the old Yahoo Group now archived here, the source of most of that info ;) )
Welcome to this great adventure with a great bunch of people.
Cya down the road sometime........................ ^.^d
Also Foretravel Owners Group on Facebook
Welcome to our Community. Adventure awaits.
Welcome.
You will love and need this forum. Get ready for a love / hate relationship with your coach!
Welcome and congrats on your new coach!
Welcome! Search is your friend, anything you need to know is most likely documented here, if not there are many knowledgeable folks willing to help.
Thank you everyone for the very warm welcome. The comment from Bob & Julie regarding the love/hate relationship cracked me up! I have already gotten a small taste of what you must be referring to. After being at MOT for a week, having a full PDI and pre-delivery inspection, the Check Engine light and that annoying dinging started going off 30 mins out of Nacogdoches on my way home.
Welcome from the poorer end of the Foretravel community!
We recommend learning as much about the operation and maintenance of your new home, if only to better make informed decisions. A Foretravel and be a great way to make a small fortune. How do you make a small fortune? Begin with a large fortune.
With the exception of the check engine light, most everything else succumbs to common sense and tender ministrations.
Art & Lynn, once described as by an employer as "Supremely Competent."
That "dinger" is under the front dash cover drivers side. Dash lifts up, dinger has a volume adjustment on it.
Danger means something: is your antenna fully down?
I turned the coach around and drove it back to MOT. They stayed late to tell me that it was low voltage on the engine batteries. Nothing that the Boost button couldn't fix.
Did anyone check the alternator output? After driving 30 minutes you should not be seeing low engine battery voltage.
Boost switch just connected the house batteries to the engine batteries. It's primary purpose is to give you more starting current when the chassis batteries are "challenged". It is not intended for continuous use.
Michelle has a good point. Check to make sure you have 13-14 volts on your gauge. You could be seeing low battery voltage alarm again after the house batteries are drained if the alternator has no output..
Yes, love/hate is a good term. Not as bad as owning a Jaguar. At least, you don't need to have two of them. :D
Pierce
Pierce, would the generator not auto start when the house batteries run low but before you really notice you are in trouble, we just had our auto start repaired and reset at I believe 12.1??? Volts to start
And the learning begins! Once again Welcome to the Frequentfleyer.
FWIW, the engine driven alternator will roll back the output voltage if your batteries try to draw too much current. As you continue driving the voltage will slowly rise as the batteries become charged and require less current. Or you could have an internally shorted battery. Or a bad alternator. Or a loose belt. Or a coolant leak onto the belt causing it to slip.
You can also start the built in generator and use it to power the chassis through the boost switch. Also we draw a line between the "House batteries" and the "Chassis battery."
Pierce, you weren't keeping up with Jaguar's 5,000 mile service interval. We had a 1964 MK X and we restored a 1952 XK120 for a friend.
Yes, MOT checked the alternator and told me that it was new and delivering the appropriate amount of current.
So this was the first lesson as a Foretravel owner that I learned -- the battery voltage (according to the VDO) was 10.5V and while driving continued to drop closer to 10V. After leaving MOT for the 2nd time, turning on the Boost switch would charge the battery back up to 10.5V, but no higher and the check engine light would turn off.
I spent the night in the coach with the generator running and Boost on for almost 4 hours. That morning the chassis batteries had gone from 10.5 to 12.5V and for the rest of the day the alternator had no problem keeping chassis voltage at 12.5 without Boost being used.
My question to the group is can the chassis batteries get so low (10.5V) that the alternator for whatever reason just can't charge them back up to 12V without plugging into shore or running the gen (with Boost on)?
The short answer is yes. And if your power supply can produce all the current the battery will accept, 4 hours is the correct amount of time to bring a lead acid battery from 0% to 80% state of charge. That would be a resting voltage of 10.5V to about 12.6V.
The long answer requires an assumption on my part that you were driving after dark with the lights on. Then you would be drawing so much current that the alternator wouldn't be able to keep up to the demand for current and would roll back the voltage to prevent damage to the alternator.
The solution is to run the generator which powers the 12V power supply and battery charger for the house and turn on the boost switch to connect the house and chassis batteries together as you have done, something you can also do while driving.
In our case, and my heart is placing limits on what and how quickly I can accomplish my task, as soon as I finish the rehabilitation of my 1968 Siata Spring, I intend to use the car to bring home a brand new Interstate 8D battery and the UPS man will deliver a Progrssive Dynamics PD9260, a 3-stage battery charger and power supply with which I have some experience. As part of moving batteries around I'll swap power supplies and move the PD9160 currently installed as house power and re-purpose it to maintain the chassis battery while parked and to provide alternator backup, and install the new PD9260 for the house batteries. Belt and Suspenders.
I'm gonna go hook wires up on the car for an hour. I promise that I won't be greedy with my energy expenditure. Promise. X
To start with 12.5 volts running with the alternator working is wrong. You should have over 14 volts going down the road. Either the gauge is wrong or the problem could be anywhere starting at the alternator, wires, and isolator. If you have a voltmeter and know how to use it start at the alternator and verify Mot's statement that the alternator is good.
OT, yes your assumption is correct that all the driving was done at night with both low beams and high beams on. Until your reply I hadn't even considered the current draw from the four headlights.
And Craneman, I will get the voltmeter out in the next day or so and check the current/voltage coming off the alternator.
This was a single owner coach and the care taken with the coach is very evident making me think that this was a simple matter of the battery draining before I picked it up. I wish I would have known that shore power doesn't charge chassis batteries and I would have had MOT use boost the day before I picked it up to get the charge up to where it needed to be.
Craneman, that 14.4V number works only if the battery if fully charged and in good condition. Frequentfleyer's battery was flat.
There are ways to do this (have shore power also charge the chassis batteries) once you get settled and want to start a list of projects. Search the forum for Trik-l-start as a starting point (and the better search engine is found hovering over "Community" on the upper bar and clicking "Search".)
It is also possible your chassis batteries or at least one of them might be bad. Another idea is to isolate each battery and load test it after it has been resting. A bad cell in 1 battery can drag the whole battery bank down.
Another idea after you solve this matter is a voltage sensing relay ( VSR) to connect the house and chassis banks while charging and then isolate them when charging is off- the result is both banks being charged. Search is your friend on this one too.
Good luck and have fun ^.^d
Ted would a Trick-L-Charge do the same thing, where it takes a few spare amps from the coach batteries and keeps the chassis batteries fully charged when on shore power?
I'm not Ted, but "si!" (although it is called Trik-L-Start or Amp-L-Start)
Ultra TRIK-L-START Starting Battery Charger/Maintainer (https://www.lslproducts.net/TLSPage.html)
AMP-L-START Starting Battery Charger/Maintainer - Overview Page (http://www.lslproducts.net/ALS_Overview_Page.html)
Photo for trik-l-start wiring:
Easy peasy (and looks familiar ;) )
I put the Amp-l-start on mine and it was one of the best and easiest projects done.
Larry
Welcome to the forum! Lots of good info here.. there are no dumb questions!! For a better visual and accurate read out of all your vital instruments you should check into a VMSpc from Roger, I got one last year and love it...
Keith
Dan, thanks so much for the photo of the trickle charger installation. Asking for the location of the battery isolator was going to be my next post.
Yep, you guys installed it, and I think it is your photo as well that I saved years ago. It's still working great.
Under your bed if your bed is north south.
I used a amp-l-start and it quit working so I just bought a couple of 40 amp icolators and hooked
them up between the 2 posts on the charger icolator. It is 1/5th of the cost and works better as
the chassis battery gets charged right away, not waiting for the house battery to get up. The
chassis battery for me is the most important one to be fully charged, especially in the winter. 80
amps maybe over kill.
I had a similar problem as frequent-fleyer describes and it ended up being my battery isolator. $200 fix and it works perfect now. This is after replacing batteries and rebuilding alternator to only have batteries keep going down to 11-12 volts. I was perplexed. But.......I read on the forum about my "smart isolator" and also got some advice from Roger - changed the isolator and problem solved.
Pat.
Isolator is inside under the bed on the foot end. Raise the bed and look on the front of the engine compartment.. I had to replace mine a year or so ago, pics of old and new. For some reason MOT didn't hook up the trik-l-start on the new one.. it has been hooked up since this pic
Hdff, would you remember the isolator current capacity of the one you replaced? Thank you!
Frequentfleyer (you spell "flyer" weird),
I'm not Keith, but any good quality battery isolator rated for 200 amp or better will work fine.
You are opening a can of worms asking about a replacement isolator, so be prepared for a deluge of differing Opinions (everbody got one) on what you should buy.
IMO, if you want to stick with something similar to what you have now, then the Victron ArgoFet 200A isolator is a excellent choice:
Victron Argofet Battery Isolator (https://baymarinesupply.com/argo-fet-battery-isolator.html)
I used a ArgoFet when I rebuilt the isolator panel on our old U280. It has been working flawlessly since then.
'93 U280 Isolator Panel Upgrade (https://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=34743)
What Pat said could be your problem. The way so check and isolator to check the voltage of the outside posts on the isolator
with the engine off and then check them again with engine on. The voltage should be higher on both posts and if not your isolator
is shot assuming you have voltage in the middle post. In my previous post I said I bought isolators, I bought diodes which work
as an isolator. In building the isolator I forgot to mention you need to build a heat sinc. I just use a piece of angle aluminum.
Shhhhhh! Oldguy. The river of knowledge on this forum is both broad and deep. No need to scare the new guy.
PS To fley is to be afraid or to cause to be afraid. Frequentfleyer is frequent scarer. To flay spelled with an a is to strip off skin.
Hahaha, my procurement abilities far exceed my fabrication abilities. :-)
Sorry I don't remember, MOT did the work
Keith
It was posted here that prior to stopping selling used coaches that FOT was installing battery combiners on all used coaches prior to their sale which matches their new coaches standard equipment.
I understand that every new coach sold anymore has a auto combiner installed.
IF you have power to either bank the other one auto charges.
One mistake on charging can and will permanently damage non li-ion batteries in my experience.
Countless posts here over time about discharged batteries by accident or failures of chargers.
We store outside in ca. so a small solar panel set and a auto combiner has proven 100% reliable in keeping both banks at 13.54 volts every time I check them in storage.
Sure seems safer to me...we are in shaky town and finding damaged batteries in a emergency could be a very bad thing.