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

[tentcamper]

That looks right. Except i'm not sure what the two black wires without the 30 amp fuse are for? If you can track them back and feel confident they are positive leads your good to go, but they could also be negative leads.

One would assume one is for a power jack? So where does the the other wire go?

[Sopper]

The paired wires travel back to the camper. It looks like household wiring (wires are attached to each other, side by side) and is pulled apart when it gets to the batteries. The 30 amp inline fuse is on a black / grey wire that is bundled with the paired wires as it runs back to the camper. My only white wire is screwed directly onto the frame near the propane tanks. This makes me think that one of the black wire pairs must be a ground for the camper lights, etc. that run off the battery.

Also note, I have not yet installed my power tongue jack and that my camper does have an 80 watt, TM installed solar panel.

I am assuming if I experiment with connections that I can use the outside front light as a good indication that the connection are sound?

Does anyone else have a 2010 2720 with solar panel and two batteries that could look at their connections for me?

Thanks again for everyone's contributions thus far!

[tentcamper]

I agree the white wire should go on the one battery neg post and the wire with a fuse should go on the other battery pos post, with the jumper between the two batteries pos to neg terminal. Once that completed your camper lights should be working.

I don't feel commfortable to tell your what to do with the other 2 black wire, but until you figure out. I would tape each end separably.

[Sopper]

Last night I connected the batteries in series and only attached the white cable (from the frame) to the negative pole and the fused black/grey wire to the positive pole. I flipped the front light switch on and saw nothing. Frustrated, I headed in the house for a bit and when I returned I saw that the front light was on...albeit faint (could be power from the solar panel powering the lights?). Curious I checked the voltage on the battery system and observed 7.0Vs coming from both batteries in series. I checked each battery individually and one was 1.5V and the other was 5.5V. Neither was performing at 6.0V as expected.

Both these batteries came with the TM when I purchased it in September of last year. The dealer offered no knowledge on the condition of the batteries. Do any of you believe that I could charge these deep cycle batteries back up to perform at 6Vs? If so...what would be the best way to do so. Also, I have not yet connected the additional black wires to the batteries but figure I will need to solve the battery issues and have the camper up / open to best troubleshoot those issues.

Deep cycle RV batteries are pricey...I'd like to get my existing batteries up to par instead...


Thanks for your input and suggestions!