Dumb question perhaps?

ac bill wrote:
I will do some more digging, perhaps there is a make/model on the convertor itself that can be seen. I haven't dug into the spot it is located yet, but appears there is a door of sorts on front of it under a cabinet. Odd little fasteners I'm unfamiliar with holding it on.

So if the unit does not actually sense when the batteries are fully charged, wouldn't this be an issue every time your plugged into shore power, even when out camping? I'd sure hope that even back in 93, they used the technology to prevent battery overcharging.

I've been keeping it plugged in so I can leave a 120v light on inside the unit for some warmth and to help prevent dampness, or sometimes an electric heater if we have company visit overnight.

Is there usually a way to shut off the convertor's charger feature manually, and still have 120v available in the coach? That would be a nice feature, if it's not automatic.

I have a separate automatic battery charger, which I guess I better hook up to the engine battery from time to time, to keep it up over the winter. It has the auto trickle charge feature, so it won't overcharge it, if say it's left on overnight.

Tenbear, they are definitely two 12 volt batteries in the coach.

Look on the converter and you will see the make/model. In all likelihood it's a single stage Parallax or something similar which charges at a constant rate but does not sense charged. It is the worst of both worlds. What you want is one that will charge at the capacity the battery will take it and then go into maintenance mode once done. For a couple of hundred bucks you can buy a Progressive Dynamics converter which will do this. You can also add a Trick-L-Start which will poach a bit of power off the coach batteries (only when charging) to maintain the chassis battery.

Right now if you don't want the battery to charge while you're plugged in to AC power just switch your battery switch to OFF (or STORE depending on labeling). You can buy a couple of Battery Minders or Battery Tenders and hook them up to AC power to keep the batteries happy. One on the coach set and one on the chassis battery.

I would highly advise going to a PD converter (you can get them on Amazon). Not hard to install. Take the old one out and wire in the new one. If you are comfortable with wiring it's a pretty quick job. You can go to their web site and figure out what swaps in for yours. It is a very common mod. Once you get the converter I would advise two 6 volt real deep cycle batteries as big as you can fit in the compartment for the coach. You can wait on that upgrade until your 12 volts go soft.