Forum Discussion

Explorer

Dec 05, 2016

Onan 5500 dedicated starter battery setup ...

Long story short my electric fridge, heater, etc. still drains my bank of 6V overnight to point not enough juice to turn generator over in mornings and not much I can really do about this (out of battery room) so no real need to discuss this aspect.

Battery bank is not low enough that the fridge turns off or inverter cries, etc. so just need something to get me going in the morning before solar system takes over. Have been using an external generator for this currently but want another solution. I have my new lonely 12V battery that came with my new Fuzion so thinking of utilizing it as a dedicated starter battery and have room for this one battery. I assume just track down the generator wires currently connected to batteries and move to this battery.

But how to charge this starter battery? My solar charge controller actually has a two battery mode but not sure how often it would get a charge in reality since most will go to the primary battery bank. I am not using my auxilary solar connection so that might be an option but dont really care to install or setup a solar panel for this so would be a minor hassle. Maybe just easiest to use a battery tender or similar plugged into AC as I still will be running the generator each day several hours. Are there more dedicated/permanent install based yet simple chargers for this? Or, maybe there is a simple DC to DC charger to just connect to my main bank to isolate the starter battery yet charge it? Maybe I am overthinking all this LOL ... any recommendations appreciated.

Toy Haulers

23 Replies

Y-Guy
Moderator
Dec 05, 2016
twvette how many batteries in your 6v bank now? 2, 4 or 6? What about adding two more to give you more to draw from?

Do you have a built in Onan generator? Onan also offers a “Plug and Play” auto-start for existing rigs that might be worth looking at.

Another option would be the Trik-L-Start
The_real_wild1
Explorer
Dec 05, 2016
I would use a battery tender like you mentioned. I bought a NOCO 7 amp tender that works better then the battery tender brand tenders I have also. I think it would be big enough that you could get it to fully charge your battery in a couple hours.
dedmiston
Moderator
Dec 05, 2016
Not a great solution, but for years I kept a second bank of two 6v batteries in a plastic tote and hooked them up to the house batteries once we got to camp. It was a pain--metaphorically and actually. The first hassle was loading them into the truck bed and unloading them and connecting them when we got to camp (and then doing the reverse when we left). Even more "pain" came when my wedding band touched the nose of the trailer and completed the circuit from the trailer (ground) to the wrench in my hand to the positive lug on the battery. That was pretty dumb, but it was even dumber when Derwud did the exact same thing on my trailer exactly one year later. We have matching his & his scars. Lame.

Anyway, the power those extra batteries provided was pretty perfect. It wasn't an elegant solution, but it worked very well on that trailer since we didn't have room for more batteries on the tongue.