Oops! Wonder why my batteries were dead?!?

EMD_Driver · 11-08-2009, 05:40 PM

Since I spent all day on the 299SR yesterday, I had to give Sunny 14 some attention today. It was 76 beautiful degrees out! I had killed the AC power to the 320SR, since we had already winterized it and I didn't want to cook the batteries with our CS3000 ancient converter.

Kitty hit the slide switch and...... Nothing! I said: "Uh-oh!" and had my son flip the breaker to the camper back on. When the power came on, I heard the unmistakable sound of the water pump running. I guess it must not have been turned off, during the winterizing process.

I left the AC power on to the camper, but the slide had to remain in. Kitty asked why we couldn't put the slide out, since we were on AC power and I explained that the slide mechanism is 12v and requires fully charged batteries. She's the second person I've heard of, that thought the slide operated on AC power. So, anyone reading this post please remember that the slide is 12v and it does require well-charged batteries.

I removed the batteries and put them on my work bench. After being charged by the converter for an hour, I had 12.43v in one battery and 12.35 in the other one. I put them both on my battery charger and will check their SOC tomorrow, when they've been off the charger for a few hours.

I did check the electrolyte level in both batteries and they ae both almost full. I will top them off, when I get some distilled water.

Gary

**Sunline Fan** · 11-08-2009, 05:49 PM

I'm confused. I agree the motor is 12V but when hooked up to AC, I think the DC output on the converter is enough to operate some 12V stuff. I put my slide out for JohnB a few weeks back and took a video of it going in/out to confirm ratcheting in both directions. I had already taken my battery home for the winter so I just hooked it up to 20A through the adapter. The slide operated just as it normally does. I had the battery cables carefully tucked out of the way so they weren't touching each other or the frame. I was also running some lights inside so the video quality would be good, and I did hear the converter fan kick up to a higher RPM at one point like normal but it did go back down when I turned off two lights.

Jon

EMD_Driver · 11-08-2009, 07:26 PM

I don't know what converter you have, but I really didn't want to risk burning up my CS3000. I haven't heard very much good about them. The slide probably would have worked. I have just been told not to run it, without well-charged batteries.

EMD_Driver · 11-09-2009, 01:54 PM

The battery charger I have, is an old 8AMP automatic charger. From the looks of the gauge, it appears that the charger either cuts itself off, or goes into a very low trickle charge mode when the battery is fully charged. I took the batteries off the charger a few minutes ago and tested each battery separately.

Both are Interstate batteries.

The black one had 13.50V in it.

The green one had 13.33v in it.

From those numbers, I would venture to say that they were on a trickle charge all day. I've left them off the charger and separated from each other and will check their SOC later this evening.

EMD_Driver · 11-09-2009, 05:07 PM

After sitting for over two hours, here's what I got...

Black battery: 13.33v

Green battery: 13.06v