Hooking the batteries back up

[Sopper]

TMers,

I took my deep cycle batteries out last fall, brought them in the house and had them hooked up to a trickle charger all winter. I took the TM out of winter storage in my garage (covered) today and looked to put the batteries back in. Attached are the pictures I took last fall of how the batteries were hooked up (not current picture). Unfortunately, the pictures are not making much sense to me now and I am hoping you guys can help.

The wires I currently have:

• White ground wire attached to the frame
• Two black wires (attached to each other) from the camper
• One black / grey wire, with a 30 amp inline fuse) bundled with the two black wires from the camper. (solar panel?)
• Jumper wire (from battery to battery)

At this point, I have the white wire attached to the negative on the right battery. I have one of the dual black wires attached to the positive on the right battery and the other attached to the negative on the left battery. I have the fused, black / grey wire attached to the positive on the left battery as was shown in the picture from last fall. I then have the jumper wire attached from the negative on the right battery to the positive on the left battery.

Inside the TM I can see a battery charge of 12V on the panel but cannot run lights, etc. What do I have hooked up wrong? Please point me in the right direction! Thanks in advance for any assistance you can lend.

[FujiPedaler]

Work with me on this but looking at your pictures, you have wires going all over the place.

Think of your 2 batteries as one big battery except that one batteries positive is connected to the others negative .

Now all of your positive (hot) leads go to the one positive side and the negetive leads go to the one negative post of the other battery.

If you draw yourself a picture of your two batteries side by side, you should be able to use the drawing as a guide to hook up correctly.

Your positive to negetive jumper should not have any other lines (wires) going to/from them, then negetive wires to negetive termanel and positive wires to positive termanel.

Hope this works for you.

[Sopper]

So, all three of my black wires should go to the same positive post? Only my one white wire should go to the negative? That isn't how it was hooked up last year. What about the fused wire?

[tentcamper]

As mentioned above the 2 6 v battires are like a 12 v in two sections.

Position the two batteries, looking at it from the front with the left battey with the negative post to the left. Put the second battery in the same way to the right. Run a heavy jumper from the left battery pos post to the Neg post on the right battery. Now if you use a meter from the left battery neg post to the right battery pos post you will have 12.x volts "a 12v battery".

First fine the wires coming from the TM. There should be a white and a black fused wire. The TM uses house hold wiring color code "Black Hot, white nature). you can put the white wire on the left battery neg post and the black wire on the right battery pos post. If there is a wire that go's to the frame of the trailer it should also go to the left battery neg post.

Now any additional wire you will need to figure out if they should go to negative or positive post. (neg post is the neg post on the left battery and positive post is the positive post on the right battery)

For these additional wires I leave this determination to you, to determine which post they should go to. Some wires use a different color coding such as Red pos and black neg, or any color they decided to use.

[Sopper]

All,

Thanks again for all the help that many of you have shared! I appreciate all the assistance.

Attached is a new sketch of the wires I have available to hookup to my batteries. I have the camper unhooked from the batteries as I feared putting the wires on the wrong locations could damage the camper.

• I have a jumper wire and can only assume that will be placed between the negative of the right-most batter and the positive of the left-most battery.
  
• The white wire, the ground I assume, it attached directly to the frame. I assume that will connect to the negative terminal on the left-most battery.
  
• The black gray cable, with the 30 amp fuse, should be attached to the + terminal on the right most battery?
  
• The two black cables, paired to each other from the camper, are giving me the biggest issues. Each has a post connection on it but I am uncertain if each need be connected to the + terminal or one on the right-most positive and another on the left-most negative.

Thanks again for all the help you can lend me! I am pretty good with electrical components as long as the wires are labeled and there is a knowledge about what needs to go where.

[Bill]

There is a picture in my Tech Album that may help. As noted above, you simply bridge the two 6-volt batteries together by connecting the positive of one to the negative of the other. Now it is the equivalent of a single 12-volt battery.

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...&pictureid=451

I'm not making much sense out of your pictures, but your description seems to say that you have three black wires. Ther\se are
o lights and 12-volt appliancers in the TM
o charge wire from solar panels
o electric jack?
All of these should be connected to the + terminal of the equivalent 12-volt battery.

There should be a white wire (goes to the lights and applianbces in the TM) and a bare wire (goes to chassis). In some newer TMs, I understand that there is only one wire, which is white. Either way, these wires go to the negative of the equivalent 12-volt battery.

Note that with a 12-volt battery, there is no way to connect anything to the center of the battery. This means that you should not connect anything to the middle of the equivalent 12-volt battery. According to your description, you have connected something, and not surprisingly, it doesn't work.

At the end of this season, you might do better to make a pencil-and-paper sketch of the hookup, rather than a photo in which the actual wires are concealed.

Bill

[Sopper]

I am currently running two 6V Interstate deep-cycle batteries on my 2010 TM 2720. These batteries were sold with the unit and the dealer had no knowledge of their condition. I also have the 80w factory installed solar panel.

I obtained my TM in October of last year and only camped in her once. When disconnected from shore / TV power I could run many of the lights, the fantastic fan and the radio with no issue (some of this might have been power from the solar panel). I winterized the batteries in November by bringing them into my basement and hooking each, independently, to a trickle charger.

I recently hooked the batteries back up to the TM and found one producing 1.5V of power and the other producing 5.5V.

Should I look into replacing these batteries? Can I charge my 6Vs back up to have them work appropriately? If so...how should I accomplish that? If I do replace the batteries should I look into getting a single 12V deep cycle battery?

Thanks in advance for any advise you can lend!