2010 pleasure-way excel coach battery wiring

running frig on dc pulls a lot of power. run it on propane almost every body uses the propane way of running the frig.

I have been running on propane because of this issue, but felt something wss wrong and the alternator just wasn't recharging battery as we drive. Gen and shore power both recharge coach battery fine. I've read that its a bit unsafe to run on propane while on the road. Good to know others are in the same boat, though.

Hi 326,

Welcome to the forums.

The alternator "reads" the chassis battery and cuts back on charging.

The "house" battery is a long wire run usually with fairly inadequate wire.

The fridge draws about 30 amps on the 12 volt DC setting.

Some improvement can be had from running thicker wire to the house bank.

Another solution is adding an external diode system to the existing alternator and using that output to recharge the house bank.

It is also possible that the existing isolator relay between the chassis and house bank has failed so that no charging at all is happening.

Check this with a meter. Measure the house bank voltage, start the engine, and remeasure the voltage. If it does not go up, there is a problem.

Great info and I'm going to check that isolator first if I can locate it. Wish I'd come to this forum a while ago.

Moved from Forum Technical Support

We always ran down the highway with the refrigerator on DC for safety. As you know, you have to promptly switch it off when parked. Hope the isolator tip works for you.

The battery should charge while driving, and keep the fridge from draining the battery.
If you stop switch over to propane, or the fridge will drain the battery pretty quick.
Also, it takes a very long time using the vans alternator to recharge house batteries. For a 50% depleated battery 8 hrs or more. So you may have a battery that is already low before you even start using the fridge.
I always ran the fridge on propane while driving, just make sure it gets turned off when getting gas. You can read the thousands of posts on this topic, and make your own choice to run while on propane or not.

There is nothing wrong with the sizeof the wire used, they made these units for quite a few years, I have owned 3 Excels. There is however a problem with your system as I always ran mine on DC while driving and never had a problem with a low battery. If you cll Pleasure-way they will e-mail the schematics to you and you can print them off, only one or two things can be wrong. Roger may well be onto it regarding a low battery. I bought my current Excel that was a left over year old model and the battery kept discharging early. I replaced it and have had no problem since. Sometime people just turn the house battery off and they never get a charge or serviced and a year or so later they are shot. Get the schematics first and do your testing if all is fine buy a good battery, you should be able to drive all day with the fridge on DC and still have plenty of juice left when you stop.

Nick

Thanks all for great suggestions. I"ll do some more testing. Battery is brand new this past summer. Is anyone familiar with an isolator relay on the Excel? I have heard that could be causing problem. Circuit breaker near battery disconnect appears normal.

Sounds like it's the isolator to several respondents, let's hope that's it. We had a PW Excel for several years and always drove with the fridge on DC, never on propane, and didn't have any problems at all. The guys at the PW factory are pretty helpful with PW owners, send them an email.