Battery + Converter

[Brightsu]

We took our 04 3326 out for Memorial Day weekend, I had packed it the day before we run it on 110 almost all the time, I'd never noticed a problem, when we got to our campsite set up and started for supper beeper started going off before we left the campground, we went in and turned the air off and the sound was coming from that detector located next to the floor in the kitchen it showed low voltage so we checked the campground meter where we had plugged in and thought maybe that the 30 amp circuit breaker was bad, we popped it and went on to supper, the beeping didn't start again until the second night when we needed the furnace and the lights seem to be going dimmer by the minute, at that time I checked the tester at the sink and the battery was totally drained, it appeared as if we had been using the battery the entire time, we put the frig on gas and we took the T/V and charged the battery enough to get us thur the night, we still didn't know for sure if it was our converter or the campground so we headed home, now our monitor for our electric TM brakes wouldn't lightup, all of the brake lights and turn signals worked fine, but we had out Mountaineer doing all the brakeing, which seem to work okay, when we arrived home we plugged the TM back into the 110 outlet we have for it, no power to the TM and the battery is dead, my husband recharged the battery and it will charged to about 3/4 but not all the way, he added water a while ago, we'll see what happens. The power converter we have has a 3 year warranty and we've only has it since last May, our TM came with the 7300. Any ideas guys? We feel the converters went bad, but does this have anything to do with our brake system, we have the Tekonsha Voyager, I know its not the best but it as served its purpose in the past, is there a fuse somewhere that works the braking system and is there a fuse for the converter? We checked the inline fuse at the battery case in the TM and it seem to be fine , I told my husband while putting things under the bed storage the fuse panel seem to be rather hot the fan seem to be running at that time but I didn't notice when it stopped. I read about a switch that is put between the converter and battery but I don't know if ours has that or not. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Pam

[Joe]

>so we checked the campground meter where we had plugged in and thought maybe that the 30 amp circuit breaker was bad, we popped it and went on to supper,<

Do you mean that you turned the circuit breaker OFF? If so, that would have further drained the battery.

Now that you are back home I have a couple of suggestions.
Get a digital voltmeter. Radio Shack has them in the $20 - $30 range.
Disconnect the TM from the 110 VAC source and measure the voltage across the battery terminals. If your battery is not fully charged it will read something less than 12.6 VDC.
Now connect the TM to your 110 VAC source and remeasure the voltage across the battery. It should be higher than your first reading, probably about 13 to 14 volts.
If it is, that means that your charger is working.
If the voltage has not increased, go inside the trailer and measure the voltages on the fuse panel in the converter. They should definately be more than 13 volts, probably in the 14 to 15 volt range. If they are, you will need to troubleshoot the circuit between the converter and the battery. That inline fuse causes a lot of problems. Also take the wires off the battery terminals and see if there is corrosion on them. A thin layer of corrosion can offer a lot of resistance to the current.

You mentioned that the fuse panel was hot and the fan was running. That's a pretty good indication that the converter is OK. That leaves the connection to the battery or the battery itself.
If the water level in the battery got below the top of the plates it's very likely that the battery will never hold a full charge again.

I hope this helps.

Joe

[Brightsu]

No we just turned it on and off, it appeared as if the power from the outside source would not pass into the TM, therefore we were using the battery the whole trip, the only way we could charge the battery was with the T/V, I'm sure we drained the battery not knowing we were using it the whole time, is there a way to know when you are using the battery and not the 110, I thought the converter used the 110 only when plugged in, does the battery need to have a full charge for the converter to work properly, as far as the fan at the converter, I only noticed it working the one time after we set up.

Pam

[rtcassel]

You said in your first post that you turned the air off. If by air you meant air conditioner, then 120v was getting into the trailer. After plugging in at a campground, you could test one of the TM's 120v outlets with the tester you used to test the campground's power supply for proper wiring in order to check that 120v is actually getting into the trailer.

[Brightsu]

My hubby thinks the converter is bad, we're going out now to check something else, all I know is it was fine at home, I ran the frig and AC while getting everything loaded, we have a hook up here at home, he says he's going to try one more time the battery has a full charge now and we're going to see what happens after hooking back to our electric here.

Pam

PS I have an appointment to get the new Prodigy brake system put on tomorrow.

[Denny_A]

...be useful.

Hooked into your battery circuit, an Ammeter will allow you to determine when current is flowing from, rather than toward the battery. Here's a link to a 2002 thread; look at post #4, by Bill:

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...hlight=ammeter

HTH - Denny_A

[countrygirl]

A lot of this thread sounds similar to the problems we had and are still experiencing with our 3124ks. I will print this whole thread out to study it better. Hopefully when Tom is stronger and in less pain from his heart surgery we can address the problem. Looks like I need to buy a volt meter and I think an amperage meter.

[countrygirl]

One thing though...we did not run our battery dry.