I ordered a Ultra TRIK-L-START™
5 Amp Starting Battery Charger/Maintainer which is a unit that robs power from the house battery to keep a charge on the Chassis battery.

I keep losing charge on the coach when parked, and could do a plug in trickle charger, but figure if I am already plugged in why not use the existing hardware.

The URL is http://www.lslproducts.com/TLSPage.html

Anybody have experience with this unit. I suspect the down side is that it could drain my house batteries but then I would have a more serious problem if the chassis batteries pulled down the house batteries.

There is a diode between the two sets of batteries to only allow charge to flow from the house to the chassis.

Tom

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Originally posted by Tom Loughney:

I keep losing charge on the coach when parked,

Tom

How long does it take for the chassis battery to lose charge? Do you know whether the battery is losing on its own, or is there a drain?

I wonder if you are treating the result rather than the cause.

I have been checking the drain, best I can. It is a slow drain which effects the starting batteries after 5 days or so. I have been parked now for 5 days and the voltage of the chassis batteries is 12.18 dropping a little each day. So there is some drain. Before, I did use the floor lights, on the aisle, the ones with the switch on the dash and they run off the chassis battery using up juice. The effect of parking for 5 days, then trying to start the rig when it was 37 degrees, and the block heater was not plugged in, well it did not have enough juice. I had the block heater replaced but they never plugged it back into the socket, the light inside worked when I turned it on, but it did not heat the engine overnight.

I have been using jumper cables to start the rig, buy jumping the house batteries. The momentary switch does not seem to allow much current, but it does work, I did check that.

These are new batteries, before I replaced them I shut the engine batteries off using the intelligent switch shut them off, but they were too old to work anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Tom Loughney:
I have been checking the drain, best I can. It is a slow drain which effects the starting batteries after 5 days or so. I have been parked now for 5 days and the voltage of the chassis batteries is 12.18 dropping a little each day. So there is some drain.

Can you measure the drain in amps? If so, read the meter, and start pulling fuses.

quote:

Before, I did use the floor lights, on the aisle, the ones with the switch on the dash and they run off the chassis battery using up juice.

That sounds like a bad way to wire them. I would consider changing that.

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I have been using jumper cables to start the rig, buy jumping the house batteries. The momentary switch does not seem to allow much current, but it does work, I did check that.

It is possible that the relay or its connections are not passing full current due to pitted contacts or bad connections. Try cleaning things up first, and examine the relay. Does it look like a Ford start solenoid? If so, it is cheap and easy to replace. If not, coes it look like it can be opened up without a can opener? Sometimes contacts can be filed to restore full current carrying capacity. If not, try to get some numbers from it for a matchup. Perhaps some DP owners here have a number.

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These are new batteries.

Fully charge them, let them sit disconnected, and monitor the voltage daily. If they drop too much, take them back and have them tested. If you don't wanna take several days, just charge them and take `em in for testing.

Do you have a hydrometer?