April 30th - May 2nd - Two Electrical Issues with Homer

Homer has batteries for lights, water pump, etc. known as the "House" batteries. There is another battery under the hood to start the engine. It is known as the "Chassis" battery.  Homer came with a battery gauge so you can monitor the amount of charge left in the batteries. This is important to know, particularly when boondocking (no hookups) and also because you never want to run batteries below 50%. It ruins them. The monitor in Homer is analog and I check each battery by moving a switch up or down. I had to put labels on it years ago because I could never remember which batteries were which. It just says "Battery 1" and "Battery 2". Last year the monitor was not giving accurate readings all the time. Sometimes it wouldn't register voltage at all.  Here is a picture of it. I have no idea how old it is but assume it is as old as Homer.

I am updating this gauge with to two separate digital gauges, one for each battery bank. John helped me find some on the internet I like. I ordered them and John will help me install them when they arrive.  I will make a new mounting plate for them.

While fooling around with the battery monitor I noticed that the converter-charger was only putting out 12. 4 volts which is insufficient voltage to keep the batteries charged. I put a new converter-charger in Homer when we first got him for two reasons:  First, the original charger-converter was then over twenty-two years old and it was not a smart charger. Secondly, it buzzed very loudly whenever on, which is when Homer is hooked to electric.  The charger was old technology. It constantly charged the batteries, whether they needed it or not. This often led to the batteries getting overcharged and boiling out battery acid. The new converter-charger I purchased also had a "Charge Wizard" feature to properly charge the batteries and properly maintain them. It has four modes:

BOOST Mode 14.4 Volts – Rapidly brings the RV battery up to 90% of full charge.
NORMAL Mode 13.6 Volts – Safely completes the charge.
STORAGE Mode 13.2 Volts – Maintains charge with minimal gassing or water loss.
EQUALIZATION Mode 14.4 Volts – Every 21 hours for a period of 15 minutes prevents battery stratification & sulfation – the leading cause of battery failure.

In boost mode it should have been charging at 14.4 volts. Something was wrong. I pulled it out and John checked the fuses, which were good, and then he took it home to look at it.  (He's a good electronics guy.)  John couldn't find anything wrong with it. He plugged it in and it was putting out voltage exactly as it was supposed to in different modes. He couldn't fix something that wasn't broken so I brought it back home and reinstalled it. Here is a picture. The white arrow points to the converter-charger.

Since it was reinstalled it has been working perfectly in all modes. Go figure. Electronic gremlins I suspect. 

The charger-converter is located above the right rear wheel well. Homer was originally carpeted with pink carpet in 1993 if you can image. In the picture you can see the pink carpet over the wheel well. It is now a very dirty "pink" because they cut a big hole in the wheel well to run wires to the 12 volt fuse panel and the converter-charger. You can see all the wires coming up through the hole which is more than two inches in diameter and lots of open space. For years while driving dirt has been being flung into that hole as the wheels turned.  When I installed the new converter-charger I stuffed a rag in the hole to keep the dirt out. The green arrow is pointing to the pink rag stuffed in the hole. Less dirt but a poor solution. The blue arrow points to the converter-charger's remote "Charge Wizard" remote. The little green light in the Wizard's hand indicates what mode the charger is in. There is a button near the bottom I can push to override the mode the charger is in if I want to. This area is all covered by an access door which brings me to the next issue.

The charger-converter needs air flow because it can get warm. In their great wisdom when building the rig they installed the converter-charger behind a wall with no way to access it. There was only a small grate for air flow. To get the old one out and put a new one in I cut a bigger hole in the wall and then make an access door.  Upon pulling the access door off to work on the converter-charger the other day I noticed a big moldy spot on the door trim. I never saw that before. Here is a picture of it in my shop.

I couldn't figure out why it would be there but then Kelly came up with a cause. Above the access door are hooks for coats, etc. We have been hanging raincoats and umbrellas there and apparently some were dripping on the molding for a while which caused the mold.  

I sanded out the mold and refinished the door. Here it is reinstalled. You can see the Charge Wizard in the middle.

I made a new plate to mount the digital meters on when they arrive. The new plate will cover the old hole exactly. I'll put pictures up of that install. Then Homer should be ready to hit the road if we are allowed to go anywhere.