July 17th-19th - New Converter/Charger Install in Homer

On June 21st I ordered a new charger/converter for Homer from "Best Converter".  After replacing the batteries the converter was still acting flakey even though only six years old. I ordered one from "Best Converter", giving business to a small company rather than Amazon. I ordered an Iota brand, which is what has worked flawlessly in Marge since 2006. Several weeks went by and the charger did not arrive. I emailed the company, no response, I left a phone message, no call back. I finally got a live person on the phone about a week ago. He advised me that the Iota was back ordered and probably is being discontinued. Of course he didn't bother to let me know that was the case. (This would not have happened ordering from Amazon.)

He talked me into buying the identical converter/charger I was replacing, which he said was the best. While it cost $25.00 more it was in stock. It shipped out the next day and I received it last Friday. Hopefully this one will last more than six years. Believe it or not I have the original converter/charger out of Homer. It is 27 years old and still works fine. Unfortunately it is old technology and tends to overcharge the batteries, plus it hums very loudly. I now use it when I need a 12 volt DC power source.

Friday as soon as the new converter/charger arrived I installed it. It was a very easy install since it was identical to the one I just took out. Here is a picture of it installed.

It is about half the size of a shoe box. Where it is installed it has plenty of ventilation, which is important. Here is a picture of the charger/converter with the access panel in front of it installed.

The little black box above the access panel is the Remote Pendant for the charger/converter. It has a little LED that lets me know by flashes what charging mode the charger is in. It also has a button I can push to change the charge rate if I want to. I really like the LED that flashes different speeds to tell me how much charge is going into the batteries.  The writing on the remote describing the charge rates is very small so I printed out a label and installed it over the door so I can tell at a glance what the charger is doing. Here is a picture.

Homer is ready to roll. Now if we could only go somewhere with no Covid and where it is COOLER!